Arfiya Eri is a young, female, multilingual former United Nations official, all of which would already help her stand out as a Japanese political candidate, but she is also of Uyghur heritage. While her campaign is not centred around her ethnic background, it is attracting attention -- positive and negative -- in a country where politics is still a largely homogenous affair. Ethnic Uyghurs generally hail from China's Xinjiang province, where the government is accused of detaining more than one million of them and other Muslim minorities in a years-long crackdown that rights groups say includes widespread "crimes against humanity". IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES