15 years ago there was no trouble in Xinjiang, you are just a brainwashed American, that's it. If China hasn't assimilated them after 70 years, it means China has no intention doing so.
People in Soviet Central Asian countries all have Russian style names and speak Russian, while in China's Xinjiang no Uighurs have Chinese names and the majority can not speak Chinese. So it's very obvious that China had never intended to do that, otherwise Mao's cultural revolution can finish all minorities once and for all.
Who said that the peoples in the ex-USSR weren't oppressed? Or that the Native Americans weren't oppressed?
None of this changes the fact that the Uighurs are being oppressed now.