BANGKOK – Chinese officials escorted Thai journalists during a tightly controlled visit to Xinjiang this week, insisting on viewing their photos and deleting any they didn’t approve of before they could be sent back to Thailand, said a journalist, who was a part of delegation invited by Beijing to showcase the well-being of Uyghurs from deported from Thailand.
Thailand put 40 Uyghur men on a plane to Xinjiang on Feb. 27, saying China had given assurances that they would not be mistreated and no third country had committed to take them. Officials later admitted the U.S. and other countries had offered to give the Uyghurs a home. They were part of more than 300 Uyghurs who fled persecution in Xinjiang but were caught and jailed in Thailand for more than a decade.
The move was heavily criticized by Western governments and human rights organizations, with the United States restricting visas for unnamed Thai officials involved in the deportation process.
Amid criticism, China invited Thai Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai along with a group of journalists on a three-day trip to Kashgar, Xinjiang, from Tuesday aimed at showcasing the well-being of the deportees and others who were deported in 2015.
But a Thai journalist, who was part of the delegation, said they were watched closely by Chinese security officials during their visit.
“Thai journalists were escorted by security personnel, who also requested to vet the images before allowing them to be sent back to Thailand,” said Pranot Vilapasuwan, news director at Thai-language daily Thairath on Facebook.
Pranot added that journalists were asked to blur the faces of Uyghurs and their families as well as Chinese officials or to avoid taking pictures of Chinese officials at all.
He also said journalists were vetted before the trip in interviews with Thai authorities.
“This means security agencies were filtering the media,” said Pranot during a program on Thairath online.
Sunai Phasuk, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch said everything about the Thai government’s Xinjiang visit was “staged” and “managed” by China.
“Thailand is parroting China’s propaganda and collaborating in the crimes against Uyghurs,” Sunai lamented.
‘Living a normal life’
Thairath cited Phumtham as saying that he had video calls with six Uyghurs who had returned from Thailand, one of whom was deported in 2015.
“He explained that after returning 10 years ago, he had been living a normal life, got married, and now has a one-month-old baby,” Phumtham said. “Upon his return, the authorities helped build a house for him.”
“I came to visit and wanted answers. We know that Xinjiang has changed a lot, which should be good for them, and good for both countries that made this decision,” he said.
Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai visits one of the 40 Uyghurs at the Uyghur’s home in Kashgar, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, March 19, 2025.(Thailand Ministry of Defense)
Qi Yanjun, China’s vice minister for public security, called the cooperation between Thailand and China “normal.”
“Some countries criticize the cooperation between Thailand and China, even though it’s just normal law enforcement, saying it’s not good that both countries are taking such intensive action,” said Qi.
“Therefore, both countries, Thailand and China, must strongly oppose this criticism,” he added.
“What the U.S. and European Union claimed about inappropriate treatment of Uyghurs is not true. Truth is truth, and everyone will see it.”
Qi’s view was echoed byTawee Sodsong, Thailand’s justice minister, who said the decision to deport Uyghurs was made on Beijing’s promise they would not be tortured.
“Today, those third countries, which are large nations, may say whatever they want, but we prefer to rely on the truth. We believe both governments are sincere,” he said. “We saw that he is living with his family. He expressed gratitude to both governments for taking care of him.”
Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kunnawut Boonreak for BenarNews and Pimuk Rakkanam for RFA.
The older brother of former World Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa is serving a 20-year sentence in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang for “inciting terrorism,” local police and security officers at a school where he taught said.
Yalkun Isa, now 63, taught at the Aksu Education Institute in the city of Aksu, a college where over two dozen Uyghur educators had been arrested in 2017 at a time of mass detentions of Uyghur educators, businessmen and cultural figures in re-education camps to prevent what China said was terrorism and religious extremism.
When an expatriate Uyghur with knowledge of the situation in Aksu told Radio Free Asia in the earlier report about the detained teachers from the school, he mentioned that Yalkun Isa also had been jailed.
Yalkun’s brother Dolkun served as president of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, or WUC, from 2017-2024. Dolkun, who has lived in exile since 1994, has long faced harassment from China for his advocacy work on behalf of Uyghurs.
A police officer with whom Radio Free Asia spoke confirmed that Yalkun had been arrested for contacting people in foreign countries by phone, but said he also had downloaded content from foreign websites.
The police officer said he saw Yalkun’s verdict, stating that the teacher had been sentenced to 20 years for inciting those around him to form an organization and to commit “terrorism.”
Another police officer from Aksu who requested anonymity so he could speak freely about Yalkun, said the teacher was arrested in late 2017 because records of his phone communications showed he had spoken with people abroad.
Forced confession
During his interrogation, which lasted about a month, Yalkun was forced to make a confession that while speaking with Dolkun, he received instructions about establishing an organization in Aksu and conducting “terrorism,” the police officer said.
A police officer at the Aksu Education Institute said Yalkun was handed over to state security agents for questioning, and that after his closed trial he was transferred to Aksu Prison.
But a political leader from Aksu’s state security police told RFA that Yalkun’s case had been transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department.
Another official from the city’s state security police who asked not to be named so he could speak freely about Yalkun said during the trial, Yalkun’s ordinary discussions about international affairs with two of his students were misrepresented as “incitement.”
Another employee at the school’s police station said Yalkun was tried alongside two former classmates from Xinjiang University but did not disclose their identities.
“All three of them were arrested for plotting terrorism,” he said.
Yalkun is currently serving his sentence at Urumqi Prison No. 1, both of these officers said.
Cautions interactions
Yalkun began working at the Aksu Education Institute after he graduated with a degree in math from Xinjiang University in 1984.
Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur activist living in Norway who maintains a list of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who have been detained, said Yalkun was always cautious in his interactions in Xinjiang because of Dolkun’s political background.
Dolkun Isa said he spoke several times with Yalkun, usually during holidays, about their elderly father’s health until April 2017, after which he lost contact with him.
In 2019, Dolkun received unofficial information from the Uyghur community that his brother had been detained and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
On Friday, Dolkun Isa posted on X that he “woke up this morning to the news — reported by RFA — that my brother, mathematics Professor Yalkun Isa, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison by China. His only ‘crime’ is that he’s my brother and Uyghur! My family and relatives are being punished for my activism abroad. +1000 of Uyghur intellectuals have been imprisoned in an attempt to silence us. But we will not be silenced!”
In 2017, authorities in Xinjiang arrested another brother, Hushtar Isa, based in Aksu, while he was working at a driving school because he was a former prisoner, sources with knowledge of the situation told RFA in an earlier report. Hushtar had been reportedly detained in 1998 and sentenced to two years in prison.
During Hushtar’s two years in a re-education camp in Aksu, authorities accused him of more than 10 crimes for “mistakes” he had committed during his life.
Chinese authorities denied that she died in the internment facility and said Memet and other members of the family were living peacefully.
A January 2020 report by China’s Global Times, a nationalistic tabloid, revealed that their father, who had been sent to a concentration camp in May or June of 2017, died a year later.
The report criticized the WUC and Dolkun Isa for what WUC claimed reflected China’s increasing frustration with his success in bringing attention to the issue of mass internment in Xinjiang.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.
Despite warnings that 40 Uyghurs could be tortured if sent back to China, Thai authorities whisked them away and deported them to Xinjiang — a homeland they fled more than 10 years ago.
The Uyghur men had been held at the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok since 2014, after getting caught trying to escape repression, and Thailand said that it agreed to the deportation after receiving assurances from Beijing that they would be unharmed.
Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have been subjected to widespread human rights abuses, including detention in massive concentration camps, rights activists say. Beijing denies those allegations.
BenarNews is an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by BenarNews.
More than two dozen Uyghur teachers at a college in Xinjiang were arrested by Chinese authorities in 2017 and are currently still serving jail sentences, Radio Free Asia was able to confirm with officials at the school.
Their arrests eight years ago occurred at a time when authorities in the northwestern region began rounding up Uyghur intellectuals, educators, businesspeople and cultural figures en masse and incarcerating them in re-education camps to prevent what China said was terrorism and religious extremism.
Last week, RFA Uyghur reported that prominent historian Ghojaniyaz Yollugh Tekin, 59, who taught the Aksu Education Institute in the city of Aksu, had been arrested in 2017 and sentenced to 17 years in prison in late 2018 for his research, writings and views that Uyghurs are part of the Turkic world — and not Chinese.
Upon further investigation, RFA learned that authorities also arrested and detained 25 other educators from the same school in 2017. But RFA could not determine the reasons for their arrests or the lengths of their sentences.
Established in 1985, the college currently has about 220 staff members — more than half of whom are Uyghurs — and 3,000 students.
During the early 2000s, there were 100-150 Uyghur teachers, according to Uyghur activist Tuyghun Abduweli, who hails from Aksu but now lives in Canada.
A Chinese national flag flies over a vehicle entrance to the inmate detention area at the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng, western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Apr. 23, 2021.(Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
A person who works at the institute but who requested anonymity for safety reasons, said more than 20 teachers from the school were taken away in several groups in 2017.
Their cases were filed by Aksu prefecture security agents, and the institute’s political affairs department and police station collaborated with them during the arrests and interrogations, the person said.
Held in a Bingtuan prison
A police officer who works at the institute told RFA that 26 teachers — mostly men — were arrested and are serving jail sentences.
He said he was involved in the cases of three of the teachers arrested — Mutellip Mamut, Eli Qasim and Eziz Memet, the last of whom was about 47 years old at the time.
Another police officer named two other imprisoned teachers — Abdusalam Eziz and Abdurahman Rozi — and said he assisted in their arrests as well as the arrest of Mutellip Mamut.
Those arrested were initially taken to Aksu Prison, but were later transferred to a detention center run by the Bingtuan at its headquarters in Shihezi in northern Xinjiang, the police officer said.
The Bingtuan is a state-run economic and paramilitary organization of mostly Han Chinese who develop land, secure borders and maintain stability in Xinjiang.
“Mutellip Mamut is currently at the Shihezi prison,” the police officer told RFA.
Authorities held secret trials for the teachers, and institute leaders and staffers who collaborated on the cases were not allowed to attend, he added.
Interrogated because of religious practices
According to a person familiar with the situation in Aksu, a literature teacher named Abdusalam had been interrogated by authorities many times because of his religious practices and was eventually suspended from work.
“His wife wore a hijab, and he himself prayed every Friday at home,” the person said. “He was frequently called out by the school because of this, and his wife was also suspended from her job.” Abdusalam was among those detained and jailed in 2017.
A security officer from the school’s legal department confirmed the arrests and detentions of the teachers, but said he could not disclose their identities because of confidentiality requirements.
About 10% of the institute’s teachers had been arrested, said another staffer.
“They’re all in prison now,” said Tuyghun Abduweli.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.
Detainees fear their return could be imminent despite UN experts urging Bangkok to halt possible transfer
Relatives of Uyghurs detained in Thailand for more than a decade have begged the Thai authorities not to deport the 48 men back to China, after the detainees suggested their return appeared imminent.
A UN panel of experts this week urged Thailand to “immediately halt the possible transfer”, saying the men were at “real risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment if they are returned”.
The discovery of 46 illegal wells dug by Chinese migrants in the far western region of Xinjiang has intensified tension with Uyghur residents and disrupted the ecological balance of the region, people with knowledge of the situation told Radio Free Asia.
Fighting over water resources has been a source of friction for years between native Uyghurs and Chinese settlers in areas under the control of the state-run Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, or XPCC, called Bingtuan in Chinese.
Authorities investigated after residents in Korla, or Kuerle in Chinese, the second-largest city in Xinjiang, complained about the proliferation of wells on the outskirts of the city, a source in Xinjiang said, asking not to be identified for security reasons.
The wells, dug to grow cotton and vegetables, have drained vital underground reserves, he said.
A view of Korla, capital of the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, in an undated photo.(AFP)
As a result, authorities discovered 46 illegally drilled holes this year alone in Korla, a policeman in Bayingholin prefecture’s Public Security Bureau who had participated in this case in its early phase told Radio Free Asia.
The residents accused of drilling the holes without a permit are from the 29th Battalion of the Bingtuan’s 2nd Division and Chinese settlers living in an economic development region on the outskirts of Korla, the officer said.
“We have been working on water management, water control, and identifying water wells since February, and we continue to work on those issues,” the police officer said.
Little accountability
But legal authorities have slowed down reviewing the cases, and the suspects were released after brief questioning, the Uyghur source said, with officials using “stability” and “unity” as excuses to let them go.
Authorities could not hold all perpetrators accountable because the activities likely involved Han Chinese, he said.
The Bingtuan is a state-run economic and paramilitary organization of mostly Han Chinese who develop the land, secure borders and maintain stability in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or XUAR, where about 12 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs live.
Made up of 14 divisions, the Bingtuan is one of the foremost institutions of Han dominance and marginalization of Uyghurs and other indigenous ethnic groups in the region, according to the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
The well-drilling began in 2012 when demand for cotton surged, the Uyghur source told RFA.
Those who stole the water conducted their activities at night using advanced technology to pump it from a depth of 200 meters, or about 660 feet, he said.
“Since they drill these wells in a forested area, a place that people hardly go, it was hard to discover their illegal activities,” the Uyghur source said.
Sun Jinlong, Communist Party secretary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, attends a meeting of the Xinjiang delegation on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, March 12, 2019.(Jason Lee/Reuters)
It costs about 150,000 yuan (US$20,600) to drill a well and make it operational, he said, an amount that Uyghurs would not likely be able to come up with.
Though the issue has sparked friction many times before, the government has protected the Han Chinese residents, he said.
The policeman initially said there were some Uyghurs among those held responsible, but when pressed for further information, he said most of those who drilled the illegal wells were Chinese who had settled in the area, including Bingtuan workers.
Staff at relevant government organization in Korla contacted by RFA declined to answer questions, but did not deny that Chinese settlers there had stolen water.
Drying up the land
The growing dependence on groundwater in the Korla area since the 1990s has reached a level that is disrupting the ecological balance, said the source familiar with the situation.
“We must control this or it will lead to a further decline in groundwater levels,” he said. “In some areas of our protective forests, the Euphrates poplars are withering and drying up.”
Water drips from a leaking pipe on a hilltop overlooking Korla, an oil town on the edge of the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Oct. 10, 2006.(Frederick J. Brown/AFP)
Peyzulla Zeydin, an ecological devastation researcher from Korla who now lives in the United States, told RFA that the misuse of water resources, including underground water, has severely impacted the region’s protective forests over time.
“In the 1990s, when we dug water wells, we could find water at just 10 meters,” he said. “Now, even at 30 meters, we can’t find water.”
“It’s getting worse because the underground water recycling system has been disrupted,” Zeydin said. “One of the main causes of the declining water levels is the growing population and the over-expansion of farmland. This has interrupted the natural underground water replenishment cycle.”
Zeydin said research indicates that the Bingtuan’s 1st Division battalions in the Korla area have overused and controlled the water resources there, leading to the drying up of Euphrates poplar trees along the lower streams of the Tarim River.
“The water level is dropping every day, and it has now reached a depth of 100 meters [330 feet],” he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.
TAIPEI, Taiwan – Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo does not use cotton from China’s Xinjiang regions, the company’s boss said in his first public declaration on the issue.
The global fashion retailer has been under intense scrutiny over its source practices amid allegations of human rights violations in the supply chain and concerns over forced labour in Xinjiang, which produces some of the world’s best cotton.
“We’re not using [cotton from Xinjiang]”, Tadashi Yanai, chief executive of Uniqlo’s parent company Fast Retailing, told BBC on Thursday, breaking his silence on the supply of fabric for his brand’s clothing.
“By mentioning which cotton we’re using … actually, it gets too political if I say anymore, so let’s stop here,” he said, without adding further details.
Companies that buy goods from Xinjiang, including clothing and cotton, have come under pressure from Western governments over the alleged genocide of the minority Uyghurs and Hui Muslims under Xi Jinping’s leadership in the past decade.
It prompted Western countries, led by the United States, to impose tough regulations on the import of goods from Xinjiang in 2022. Several global brands, such as H&M and Nike, removed products using Xinjiang cotton from their shelves, expressing concern for the alleged use of forced labor.
Uniqlo had remained neutral “between the U.S. and China” over the Xinjiang row, although its parent company had claimed before that the retail giant did not use any materials linked to human rights violations.
China has repeatedly denied allegations of “crimes against humanity”, calling them the “lie of the century”.
A U.S. federal report published in 2022 estimated that cotton from Xinjiang accounted for roughly 87% of China’s production and 23% of the global supply in 2020 and 2021.
The Uniqlo boss’ remarks came after German automaker Volkswagen said Wednesday that it has sold its operations in Xinjiang.
Volkswagen has also been accused of allowing Uyghur slave labor at its joint-venture plant with Chinese state-owned company SAIC Motor Corp. in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital.
The company cited “economic reasons” for its pullout from Xinjiang, home to about 12 million predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, where it also has a test track in Turpan.
The carmaker announced the decision at the same time as saying it would extend its partnership with Chinese partner SAIC by a decade to 2040.
Volkswagen’s decision was welcomed by rights groups as a “positive step, albeit long overdue”.
“Car companies should map their supply chains and disengage from any supplier sourcing material directly or indirectly from Xinjiang,” said Jim Wormington, senior researcher and advocate in the Economic Justice and Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.
The G7 Foreign Ministers’ meeting earlier issued a statement expressing concern over the situation of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and Tibetans in Tibet persecuted by the Chinese government.
The G7, or Group of Seven, comprises the major industrial nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States – in addition to the European Union.
“We remain concerned by the human rights situation in China, including in Xinjiang and Tibet,” said the statement, which urged China to abide by its international human rights commitments and legal obligations.
Edited by Kiana Duncan.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.
German automaker Volkswagen said Wednesday that it has sold its operations in northwest China’s Xinjiang region, where Beijing has been accused of widespread human rights abuses against Uyghurs.
In a statement, the company cited “economic reasons” for its pullout from Xinjiang, home to about 12 million predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, where it also has a test track in Turpan.
“While many SVW [SAIC-Volkswagen] sites are being, or have already been, converted to produce electric vehicles based on customer demand, alternative economic solutions will be examined in individual cases,” the statement said.
“This also applies to the joint venture site in Urumqi,” it said. “Due to economic reasons, the site has now been sold by the joint venture as part of the realignment. The same applies to the test tracks in Turpan and Anting [in Shanghai].”
The plant was sold to Shanghai Motor Vehicle Inspection Certification, or SMVIC, a subsidiary of state-owned Shanghai Lingang Economic Development Group for an undisclosed amount, Reuters reported.
Volkswagen declared in December 2023 that the audit of its Urumqi factory showed no signs of human rights violations.
But after analyzing the leaked audit report, Adrian Zenz, senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, found that contrary to its claims, the audit failed to use international standards and was conducted by questionable examiners.
Zenz, an expert on Xinjiang, concluded that the audit’s methodology was faulty and insufficient and that the report was “unsuited to meaningfully assess the presence or absence of forced labor at the factory.”
Zenz called the news a “huge victory for the Uyghurs.”
“This step was long overdue, he told RFA. “Sadly, it took public pressure and showcasing the full extent of the sham of the audit.”
Strong international pressure
Gheyyur Qurban, director of the Berlin office of the World Uyghur Congress who has led anti-Volkswagen activities, said Volkswagen’s withdrawal from Xinjiang was not due to economic reasons, but was linked to strong international pressure over the Uyghur issue.
He said the World Uyghur Congress, a Uyghur advocacy group based in Germany, pressured the automaker to leave the region and forced it to defend itself before the international community.
A Volkswagen I.D. concept car is displayed at the Beijing Auto Show in Beijing, China, April 24, 2018.
In the statement, Volkswagen also said it was extending its joint venture agreement with SAIC until 2040 to introduce new vehicles to meet China’s growing market demand for electric cars. The original agreement was in place until 2030.
The news came as the G7 Foreign Ministers’ meeting issued a statement expressing concern over the situation of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and Tibetans in Tibet persecuted by the Chinese government.
The G7, or Group of Seven, comprises the major industrial nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and the European Union.
“We remain concerned by the human rights situation in China, including in Xinjiang and Tibet,” said the statement, which urged China to abide by its international human rights commitments and legal obligations.
But Rushan Abbas, chairperson of the executive committee at the World Uyghur Congress, said that the carefully worded statement was insufficient.
“The genocide persists, conditions worsen and concrete actions remain lacking,” she said, referring to China’s violence targeting the Uyghurs, which the U.S. and some Western parliaments have recognized as genocide.
“While de-risking supply chains is vital, it must be paired with bold measures to hold China accountable for state-sponsored forced labor,” Abbas said. “Awareness demands action. We urge G7 nations to move beyond rhetoric and lead in holding China accountable for its human rights abuses.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alim Seytoff for RFA Uyghur and Roseanne Gerin for RFA English.
Rahima Mahmut, in exile in the UK, ‘disappointed’ at failure to describe Beijing’s crackdown on minority as genocide
A leading Uyghur activist has accused the Labour government of “falling behind” its allies in failing to stand up to China, after ministers backtracked on plans to push for formal recognition of the country’s treatment of the minority group as genocide.
Speaking after David Lammy’s first visit to China as UK foreign secretary, the human rights activist Rahima Mahmut, who has lived in exile in the UK since 2000, said she had hoped there would be a shift in UK policy once the party came into power, including following the US in declaring a continuing genocide in Xinjiang.
Foreign secretary discussed China’s treatment of Uyghurs and support of Russia as well as ‘areas of cooperation’
David Lammy pressed his Chinese counterpart on human rights concerns and China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during talks in Beijing, the Foreign Office has said.
The foreign secretary had been under pressure to take a tough line on a range of human rights issues with the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, when the pair met on Friday during Lammy’s first visit to China since taking office.
Labour has backtracked on plans to push for formal recognition of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide in the run-up to David Lammy’s trip to the country this weekend.
The foreign secretary is expected to arrive in Beijing on Friday for high-level meetings before travelling to Shanghai on Saturday.
Rights groups are condemning U.S. footwear and apparel company Skechers as it used the star power of martial arts actor Donnie Yen to open a new store in Xinjiang despite allegations that ethnic Uyghurs in China’s far west are used for forced labor.
In a video Yen posted to Instagram, crowds inside a glitzy shopping mall in the regional capital of Urumqi clamored to catch a glimpse of the Hong Kong actor, who is a Skechers brand ambassador — and is known to have pro-China sympathies.
The company promoted its Sept. 28 Urumqi store opening heavily on Chinese social media, and Yen encouraged his nearly 130 million followers on Weibo to visit the outlet and explore its “comfortable treasures,” Voice of America reported.
The brand is big in China: Of Skechers 5,200 retail stores worldwide, China has the most with more than 940.
But the big promotional event — and opening a story in Urumqi — showed that Skechers was “completely tone deaf” to concerns about the use of Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang, said Jewher Ilham, the forced labor project coordinator at the Worker Rights Consortium.
“Skechers isn’t yet taking seriously the need to extricate its business from the Uyghur region, even after it was previously linked to forced labor by U.S. Customs and other institutions,” Ilham said.
The United States has taken a strict stance on the issue. Under the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, imports from Xinjiang are banned from entering the United States unless they are certified as not made with forced labor.
In June 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security added Skechers supplier Dongguan Oasis Shoes Co., Ltd., to a list of companies suspected of using Uyghur slave labor.
Hong Kong actor Donnie Yen appears at the opening of a Skechers store in Urumqi, capital of northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, in images posted to Yen’s Instagram account on Sept. 29, 2024. (Photo via @donnieyenofficial)
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute issued a 2020 report titled “Uyghurs For Sale which found that 83 global companies and brands, including Skechers, were directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur forced labor in 27 factories in China from which they sourced products.
‘Distasteful’
Skechers has been identified as a company within that risk, said Henryk Szadziewski, research director at the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington.
“For me, even if the question of forced labor is in dispute, the very fact that you’re opening a shop [and] profiteering in a region where there’s ongoing crimes against humanity, I’d have to question the decision of Skechers here and ask them what kind of ethical guidelines and clearance were made to make this decision,” he told Radio Free Asia.
“So, it’s not just the forced labor,” he said. “[In] this region are ongoing crimes against humanity, and [Skechers’] decision is to open a shop and make money. That’s very distasteful.”
When RFA contacted Jennifer Clay, vice president of corporate communications at Skechers, for comment, her assistant said Clay was traveling and “too busy to deal with that right now.”
Yen, whose breakout film in the West was “Ip Man” in 2008, is a controversial figure because of his pro-China comments. He most recently appeared in “John Wick 4” in which he had a prominent role along with American actor Keanu Reeves.
His appearance at the Oscars in Hollywood in March 2023 prompted protesters to gather outside the venue, criticizing him for his lack of support for Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy movement, which he had called “a riot.” Some critics even called on event organizers to disinvite Yen.
Many Hong Kongers have boycotted Yen’s movies over his pro-Beijing stance during the 2019 protests against the erosion of Hong Kong’s promised freedoms and judicial independence that saw pitched battles between protesters armed with bricks, Molotov cocktails and other makeshift weapons against fully equipped riot police who fired rubber bullets and tear gas.
Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jilil Kashgary for RFA Uyghur.
In late August, a Taiwanese YouTuber named Chang Shao-qun, who goes by “Han Guo Ren”, with more than half a million followers posted a video on YouTube of his tour of a large bazaar in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi, accompanied by two other Taiwanese online celebrities.
At around the video’s five-minute mark, Chang abruptly asks one of his guests: “First time in the bazaar? See any ‘extermination’ going on?”
Chang’s remark was a sarcastic reference to concerns of some Western governments and international organizations about genocide in Xinjiang, home to many members of the Uyghur Muslim community and other ethnic minorities.
The Chinese government has been accused of ethnic genocide there, involving mass detentions, forced labor, and cultural suppression. Beijing denies the accusations, framing its actions as counter-terrorism efforts.
Chang is not alone in promoting the message that Xinjiang is a safe place to travel with no abuses to be seen.
AFCL found several other Taiwanese YouTubers who made trips to Xinjiang to promote a message that Xinjiang was a safe place to travel or there were “no concentration camps” there because they didn’t see them.
Several Taiwanese YouTubers posted videos walking through Xinjiang. (Graphic/AFCL)
Who paid for their trips?
Some of the videos posted by Taiwanese YouTubers sparked online debate among Chinese-speaking users, with many questioning whether the content creators were paid by the Chinese government. Some accused the creators of being a mouthpiece for the state, while others defended the content as independent and genuine.
In one of the videos, a young man mentioned spending about 66,000 Taiwanese dollars (US$2,094) to join a tour of Xinjiang, but AFCL has not been able to independently verify whether the YouTubers’ trips were self-funded or sponsored by the Chinese government.
As of press time, none of the YouTubers had responded to inquiries on their trips.
However, AFCL found that the Chinese government has used the comments and content from those Taiwanese YouTubers to promote its political narratives about Xinjiang and Taiwan on social media and in reports published by state media, as seen here.
Both Taiwanese and Chinese media outlets posted coverage supporting the YouTubers’ comments (Screenshots/CTI YouTube and China Daily’s official X account)
“Although the [video’s] production is rough and its logic weak, it still gives an air of ‘authenticity’ that attracts many young viewers,” said Su Chiao-ning, an associate professor of journalism at Oakland University, after watching one of the videos.
“The videos give the impression that Chinese policies in Xinjiang are doing great,” Su told AFCL, adding that this is meant to make Taiwanese less wary of China, in line with Beijing’s goal of unifying Taiwan with mainland China.
The overarching goal of Chinese propaganda is to uphold the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party in the face of international criticism, Su said.
Narratives about Xinjiang in particular were aimed at portraying it in a positive light to deflect international criticism and accusations of rights abuses, she said.
China has been accused of cultivating foreign influencers who promote the Communist Party line and counter global narratives.
A Canberra-based think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute said China had “cultivated” a large pool of foreign influencers and content creators who push the Chinese government’s online propaganda and sell the China dream.
Beijing has set up multilingual influencer incubator studios, tapped into a network of international students at Chinese universities, and created competitions among ambitious creators to push the pro- party-state’s narrative and combat global perception of China, the think tank added.
No concentration camps?
A claim made by one of the YouTubers that there are no concentration camps in Xinjiang because he or she didn’t see them is misleading.
Evidence and testimonials strongly suggest the existence of concentration camps in Xinjiang, where Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities are detained.
Former detainees have reported being subjected to forced labor, indoctrination, and severe human rights abuses, including torture.
Satellite imagery, leaked government documents, and investigative reports have also provided further proof of these camps, which Beijing describes as “vocational training centers” but are widely seen as part of a broader campaign to suppress and control the Uyghur population.
‘Safe’ for travel?
The claim that Xinjiang is a safe place to travel is also misleading, at least for Taiwanese people.
Taiwan raised its travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau to the second-highest orange alert in June, advising its citizens to avoid unnecessary travel to those regions due to increasing safety concerns.
This came after a set of newly issued guidelines by China, which allows individuals advocating for Taiwanese independence to be sentenced to life imprisonment or even death.
Taiwan maintains that it is a sovereign state with its own government and democratic system, though it stops short of formally declaring independence to avoid escalating tensions with China, which views Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.
Figures compiled by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and several other non-government groups showed that 857 Taiwan nationals have been “forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily arrested” in China over the past 10 years.
Screenshot from one of the vloggers’ trips to Urumqi. (Screenshot/YouTube)
Uygher language
One Taiwanese YouTuber claimed that there was no suppression of the Uyghur language in Xinjiang, citing the fact that the names of Urumqi metro stations were written in both Chinese and Uyghur.
Chinese law stipulates that signs at public facilities in autonomous regions across China such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia must be written in both Chinese and the local minority language.
However, it is flawed reasoning to use this as evidence that the Chinese government is not suppressing the Uyghur language, as there have been clear signs that such suppression is taking place. For instance, in 2017, Radio Free Asia reported that Xinjiang’s Department of Education instructed schools across the region to stop using supplementary teaching materials in Uyghur and Kazakh.
Mosques
Some YouTubers claimed to have seen many mosques near the Urumqi metro, using this as evidence to argue that there had been no destruction of religious sites in the region.
However, they failed to provide enough evidence, such as visual evidence, to back their claim.
Multiple media reports have highlighted the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on Islam, including a 2023 Financial Times investigation that revealed more than 1,700 mosques had been torn down or “sinicized” between 2018 and 2023. This process involved modifying visible Islamic elements and replacing them with Chinese-style architecture.
These actions align with an RFA report indicating that, during his second visit to Xinjiang in August 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping instructed officials to “promote the Sinicization of Islam” and “effectively control various illegal religious activities.”
Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke and Taejun Kang.
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Rita Cheng for Asia Fact Check Lab.
China has launched an investigation into PVH Corp., the U.S. parent company of fashion brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, for suspected discriminatory measures by refusing to purchase cotton and other products from its northwestern region of Xinjiang, home to 12 million Uyghurs.
Analysts said the measure appears to be a retaliatory response by Beijing against companies complying with U.S. laws that ban the import of materials and products from Xinjiang suspected of using Uyghur forced labor.
“China is attempting to retaliate against U.S. sanctions on Xinjiang region by imposing its own sanctions on companies that follow U.S. sanctions,” said Anders Corr, principal of the New York-based political risk firm Corr Analytics. “It’s a very bad idea.”
“Beijing is trying to tell Calvin Klein not to follow U.S. law but to follow Chinese law,” he said.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday that PVH Corp. must provide documentation and evidence within 30 days to show it did not engage in discriminatory practices over the past three years.
“The U.S. PVH Group is suspected of violating normal market trading principles and unreasonably boycotting Xinjiang cotton and other products without factual basis, seriously damaging the legitimate rights and interests of relevant Chinese companies and endangering China’s sovereignty, security and development interests,” the ministry said in a statement.
In response to the measure, Alison Rappaport, PVH’s vice president of external communications, said the company maintains strict compliance with relevant laws and regulations in the countries and regions where it operates.
“We are in communication with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and will respond in accordance with the relevant regulations,” she said, without further comment.
Genocide
In 2021, the U.S. government declared that China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, the sterilization of women, forced labor and cultural and religious erasure, amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity. Legislatures in several Western countries passed similar declarations.
To punish China and get it to change its policies, the United States and other countries have banned the import of products from Xinjiang produced by Uyghur labor. About 90% of China’s cotton is produced in Xinjiang, most of which is exported.
Since June 2022, the U.S. government has blacklisted companies in China that make products linked to forced labor in Xinjiang under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA.
The law also authorizes sanctions on foreign individuals and entities found responsible for human rights abuses in the northwestern region.
Henryk Szadziewski, research director at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said China is using the measure to lash back over criticism of its policies in Xinjiang.
“This is very much a message to multinational corporations that they should not comply with sanctions and other kinds of bans placed on entities operating in Xinjiang,” he said. “It definitely is a countermeasure to what is being done outside of China.”
Nevertheless, multinational companies that adhere to U.S. sanctions and exclude forced labor products from their supply chains could face repercussions in China, Szadziewski said.
“If you do want to operate in China, you really have to operate by their rules and not by the rules of elsewhere,” he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcom Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Uyghar for RFA Uyghur.
The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council called on China on Tuesday to implement recommendations made by the U.N.’s human rights office in a two-year-old report issued and to release Uyghurs and others unjustly detained in Xinjiang.
American diplomat Michèle Taylor also demanded that China clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing family members and facilitate safe contact and reunion during a speech at the current Human Rights Council session in Geneva, which runs from Sept. 9 to Oct. 11.
Taylor read the joint statement on behalf of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States – all members of the Core Group on Xinjiang.
The 46-page report by then-U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said “serious human rights violations” had been committed in Xinjiang in the context of the Chinese government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies, and that repression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities there “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
Earlier this year during China’s Universal Periodic Review – a human rights record review by U.N. member states that occurs every five years – “China rejected many legitimate concerns and dismissively labeled the OHCHR’s assessment ‘completely illegal and void,’” Taylor said.
EU’s statement
Rushan Abbas, executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, praised the Core Group’s statement because it highlighted “the undeniable atrocities” of arbitrary detention, forced labor and cultural erasure occurring in Xinjiang, as documented by the OHCHR.
“The way the CCP exerts influence in the U.N. is to bury the ongoing genocide, and these findings are deeply troubling,” she told Radio Free Asia, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. “Every day of inaction only prolongs the suffering of Uyghur families.”
“It is essential that the U.N. strengthens its efforts to hold China accountable,” Abbas said.
Rushan Abbas, executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, holds a photo of her sister, Gulshan Abbas, who is imprisoned in Xinjiang, during a rally in New York, March 22, 2021. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP)
The U.S.’s statement, along with another by the European Union, coincided with this week’s U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.
“Numerous reports by U.N. treaty bodies and special rapporteurs, and in particular OHCHR’s assessment report on human rights in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, confirm that the human rights situation requires the urgent attention of the government of China, U.N. bodies and the human rights system,” the delegation said.
It also noted that the human rights situation in neighboring Tibet “continues to be dire” with compulsory boarding schools for Tibetan children and DNA sampling, and said the EU would closely monitor the safeguarding of the fundamental freedoms, cultural heritage and identity of Tibetans.
The delegation called on China to provide bilingual education in Tibetan and Chinese at all levels of instruction.
“The EU continues to urge China to abide by its obligations under national law, including its own Constitution, and international law, to respect, protect and fulfill the rule of law and human rights for all, including Uyghurs, Tibetans and other persons belonging to national or ethnic, linguistic, religious or other groups and minorities across China,” the delegation said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian speaks during a press conference in Beijing, China, March 20, 2024. (Tingshu Wang/Reuters)
“They stressed that issues related to Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Xizang are China’s internal affairs,” he said, using the Chinese government’s word for Tibet.
“They spoke against the politicization of human rights issues, the application of double standards and interference in other countries’ internal affairs in the name of human rights,” Lin said.
Edited by Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alim Seytoff for RFA Uyghur and Roseanne Gerin for RFA English.
Volkswagen’s audit of its joint venture plant in Xinjiang — where human rights groups accuse it of using Uyghur forced labor — contains flaws that make it unreliable, said an expert who obtained a leaked confidential copy of the audit.
The German automaker had declared in December that the audit of the factory, a joint venture with Chinese state-owned SAIC Motor Corp., showed no signs of human rights violations.
But after analyzing the leaked audit report, Adrian Zenz, senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, found that contrary to its claims, the audit failed to use international standards and was therefore “unsuited to meaningfully assess the presence or absence of forced labor at the factory.”
“The methodology of the audit was extremely faulty and insufficient,” he told Radio Free Asia in an interview.
Zenz also found problems with auditors themselves.
Last year, Volkswagen hired the Berlin-based consultancy Löning-Human Rights & Responsible Business GmbH to perform the audit. Löning in turn commissioned the Shenzhen-based Laingma law firm, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, to conduct the actual examination.
The Volkswagen-SAIC Motor joint venture plant is seen on the outskirts of Urumqi in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, April 22, 2021. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
But Zenz found that neither Liangma nor its expert, British national Clive Greenwood, had experience in performing social audits or SA8000 certifications based on internationally recognized standards of decent work.
“Liangma’s audit did not conform to the SA8000 standard that it claimed to assess,” Zenz wrote in the 24-page report issued Thursday that was posted on the website of the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington–based conservative defense policy think tank.
“Shortcomings in the audit’s method and implementation mean that it was not able to adequately assess forced labor risks,” he wrote.
Inconsistencies
Löning, which claimed the application of SA8000 auditing principles, neglected key aspects of this standard and ignored the region’s repressive political environment, Zenz found.
Furthermore, Liangma’s website does not advertise auditing services or indicate that the firm has expertise in conducting them. And the audit did not assess all the indicators of possible forced labor, he later told RFA in a phone interview.
Zenz also found that two Han Chinese lawyers and Greenwood conducted the audit, but did not ask employees questions about possible forced labor, and they didn’t follow standards for worker interviews, he said.
An aerial view of Volkswagen cars to be loaded onto a ship at a port in Nanjing, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, June 23, 2024. (AFP)
The auditors live streamed interviews with workers back to their home office, thereby affording workers no confidentiality and risking intercepts via the internet by the Chinese government, he said.
By reading the leaked audit document, one can “assess the discrepancy between Volkswagen’s final statement about the audit and what the audit itself actually said,” Zenz said.
Volkswagen defended the audit, saying it “always adheres to the legal requirements in its communications,” a company spokesperson told RFA in an email, asking not to be identified by name. “At no time has there been any deception of investors or the public.”
“It is totally unacceptable for a major company like Volkswagen to continue operating a factory where assimilationist policies are promoted, and unacceptable that claims were made about the integrity of their supply chain due diligence which appear to be false,” said the statement issued by lawmakers from various democratic countries focused on relations with China.
The group called on Volkswagen to withdraw from Xinjiang and provide a full explanation in response to reports about the audit.
The audit also indicated that the factory held staff activities to promote “ethnic unity” and ensure “harmony,” though these activities are associated with forced assimilation, Zenz’s report notes.
“This raises severe ethical concerns over Volkswagen’s continued presence in the region,” Zenz wrote.
“A review of the audit shows that it did not attempt to assess forced labor according to international standards,” Zenz said. “It simply claims no forced labor based on a visual inspection of the factory and a review of worker contracts.”
Furthermore, Greenwood, who joined Liangma in September 2023, shortly before the audit to participate in it, has publicly stated that SA8000 audits are worthless in China, the report said.
“Mr. Greenwood’s enigmatic and in parts highly obscure background is marked by twists, turns, contradictions and obfuscation,” Zenz said in the report.
‘Profiting from exploitation’
Uyghur rights groups have repeatedly called for Volkswagen to withdraw its presence and supply chains from Xinjiang and to shut down its joint venture in Urumqi.
The World Uyghur Congress, or WUC, headquartered in Germany, said Volkswagen had “long demonstrated its complicity in the Chinese government’s genocide of Uyghurs.”
The Volkswagen-SAIC Motor plant is seen on the outskirts of Urumqi in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, April 22, 2021. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
“Credible and independent audits are not possible in a repressive environment, where millions of Uyghurs are under extensive surveillance, arbitrarily detained, and tortured for words or appearances that do not conform to Communist Party ideals,” Gheyyur Qurban, the group’s director of German Advocacy, said in a statement.
“It is high time for VW to leave,” he said.
Rushan Abbas, executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, or CFU, said the leaked audit report pointed to “not mere oversight” but a “deliberate, cold-blooded betrayal of basic human dignity.”
CFU said it received a copy of the leaked audit report in August and that its findings had been shared with Financial Times, Der Spiegeland German TV broadcaster ZDF.
“Profiting from the exploitation and suffering of innocent people is the height of moral bankruptcy,” Abbas said in a statement. “Volkswagen must exit the Uyghur homeland now and take a definitive stand against genocide.
“This isn’t about a flawed audit — it’s about a corporation knowingly prioritizing profits over the lives of Uyghur people,” she said.
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alim Seytoff for RFA Uyghur and Roseanne Gerin for RFA English.
A group of 10 Pakistan-based businessmen who praised China’s policies during a trip to Xinjiang this month have been blasted by Uyghur activists for parroting Beijing’s propaganda and turning a blind eye to China’s oppression of the roughly 12 million Uyghurs living there.
The businessmen, most of whom were ethnic Uyghurs, came on the eight-day trip funded by the Chinese government from the Ex-Chinese Association Pakistan, established in 2007 with China’s support to promote the welfare of the Uyghur community in the country.
In social media posts, the delegation said they saw Uyghurs and other Muslims living happily and peacefully in the far-western region, and that China was actively developing the region. They also dismissed Western reports of Chinese atrocities.
Photos and videos from the trip, which began on Aug. 20 and included stops in Urumqi, Korla and Kashgar, show members of the delegation — two of whom wore doppas, or Uyghur skullcaps — raising Chinese flags, attending special banquets and participating in events organized by officials.
The posts showed them watching musical performances and proclaiming that “Muslims of all ethnicities are living happily in Xinjiang.”
The trip is the latest by officials from mostly Muslim countries organized by Beijing in an effort to dispel allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs in the region, activists say.
An estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs have been put into concentration camps scattered around Xinjiang, although Beijing has described them as job training facilities that are now mostly closed.
But this was the first time that a foreign delegation with ethnic Uyghurs from a Muslim-majority country was invited to the far-western region, Uyghur activists said.
“Despite having relatives in prison, they remain silent about East Turkestan because they benefit from the Chinese consulate” in Pakistan, said Omer Khan, founder of the Pakistan-based Omer Uyghur Trust, which assists Uyghurs living in the country, using Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang.
“Their actions bring shame not only to Uyghurs in their homeland, but also to Uyghurs worldwide,” he said.
RFA could not reach the Ex-Chinese Association Pakistan for comment.
Helping cover up?
Activists and Uyghurs abroad said they found the photos and videos disturbing, mainly because most Uyghurs living outside China cannot communicate with their relatives in Xinjiang or obtain information about those who have been detained there.
Uyghurs in Pakistan are outraged by the delegation members, seeing them as aiding and abetting China’s efforts to cover up the Uyghur genocide, Khan said.
Nearly 1,000 Uyghur families live in Gilgit and Rawalpindi, Pakistan, where their ancestors migrated from Xinjiang 50 to 60 years ago. However, they are stateless and do not have Pakistani citizenship.
Members of the delegation — which included association chairman Muhammad Nasir Khan and Nasir Khan Sahib, former chairman of the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry — began posting on social media in Urdu and English as soon as they arrived in Xinjiang, Khan said.
In Korla, the second-largest city by population in Xinjiang, they participated in the city’s “Intangible Cultural Heritage Week” as part of China’s “Xinjiang is a wonderful place” propaganda campaign designed to counter criticism of its policies in the restive, heavily Muslim region, he said.
The Chinese press covered the delegation’s visit, claiming that they witnessed peace, stability, economic development, religious harmony and cultural prosperity in the region.
State-controlled media reports publicized the delegation’s statement: “We can see people dancing happily all the time. We really feel that the life of the people in Xinjiang is sweeter than honey.”
Abdul Aziz, a Uyghur businessman from Gilgit who participated in the Xinjiang trip, posted short videos on Facebook titled “Xinjiang trip diaries,” showing the delegation visiting exhibitions on counter-terrorism and anti-extremism, the International Grand Bazaar and the Islamic Institute of Xinjiang in Urumqi and tourist sites in other places.
RFA’s attempts to contact Abdul Aziz via his social media platforms were unsuccessful.
Pakistan under pressure
Hena Zuberi, director of the human rights group Justice for All, described the situation as deeply saddening, saying Beijing is using such visits to justify its genocidal policies under the guise of China-Pakistan friendship.
Pakistan has come under pressure from Beijing because of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a 3,000-kilometer (1,800-mile) Chinese infrastructure network project under the Belt and Road Initiative to foster better trade with China, and secure and reduce travel time for China’s Middle East energy imports.
“If they took a stance and they said and asked the hard questions and demanded to know what was happening to those Muslim people in the Uyghur region, I think the situation would be different,” Zuberi said of the visiting delegates.
“But Pakistan is so economically imprisoned by China, they can’t,” she said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur.
Two years after the U.N.’s human rights chief said China’s repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang may constitute “crimes against humanity,” her successor on Tuesday called for a full investigation into the charges, while rights groups called for more pressure on Beijing.
On Aug. 31, 2022, in a long-awaited report issued on her last day on the job, then U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said that “serious human rights violations” were committed in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in the context of the Chinese government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies.
Her successor, Volker Türk, has repeatedly called on China to address concerns documented in the damning, 46-page Bachelet report, including China’s arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and the separation of children from their families. UN efforts, however, have met angry denunciations and stonewalling by Chinese diplomats.
Workers are seen on the production line at a cotton textile factory in Korla, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China April 1, 2021. (cnsphoto via Reuters)
On Tuesday, Türk’s office in Geneva repeated its call for action.
“On Xinjiang, we understand that many problematic laws and policies remain in place, and we have called again on the authorities to undertake a full review, from the human rights perspective, of the legal framework governing national security and counter-terrorism and to strengthen the protection of minorities against discrimination,” the office of UN rights chief said in a statement Tuesday.
“Allegations of human rights violations, including torture, need to be fully investigated,” said Ravina Shamdasan, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.
“We are also continuing to follow closely the current human rights situation in China, despite the difficulties posed by limited access to information and the fear of reprisals against individuals who engage with the United Nations,” added Shamdasan.
The statement also urged Beijing to “take prompt steps to release all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty, and to clarify the status and whereabouts of those whose families have been seeking information about them.”
The new statement was welcomed by human rights groups and experts, but they also urged more pressure to overcome Chinese resistance that had prevented progress on the issue since the August 2022 report.
“Two years ago, we welcomed OHCHR’s report on the human rights situation facing the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China. Since then, sadly, we have seen little else to raise awareness of, or improve, their plight,” said Kat Cosgrove of the U.S. watchdog group Freedom House.
“The United Nations has a responsibility to continue to use all the tools at their disposal to push the CCP to end their persecution and repression, including allowing independent investigators full access to Xinjiang,” Cosgrove, Freedom House’s deputy director of policy and advocacy, told RFA Uyghur.
The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), a human rights advocacy group, also gave a guarded welcome to the High Commission’s statement, but urged concrete actions from the UN agency, including setting up a monitoring and reporting outfit to “put an end to China’s exceptionalism.”
Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet attends the II National Assembly of Women Mayors in Tegucigalpa, Aug. 22, 2024. (Orlando Sierra/AFP)
The ISHR, based in Geneva and New York, quoted Uyghur human rights lawyer Rayhan Asat, as saying the new statement that Türk’s office was “committed to tangible change in China is heartening.”
“Yet, China has not implemented any OHCHR recommendations, and independent investigations are still limited or blocked,” she added.
The U.S. government has since 2021 accused Beijing of carrying out a campaign of “genocide” against Uyghurs and other Muslims in far-west Xinjiang, including by sterilizing women, banning the exercise of culture and imprisoning many Uyghurs in high-security internment camps.
The UN and Western governments have remained steadfast in their condemnation of China over its harsh policies affecting Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hongkongers, though Beijing has angrily denied accusations of abuses and continued maintaining an iron grip on them.
Uyghur exile and advocacy groups believe that the United Nations and individual states have failed to take concrete measures to punish China for severe rights violations in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, torture, cultural genocide, forced labor and the forced sterilization of Uyghur women.
China denies it has committed rights abuses against the 11 million Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking group that refers to Xinjiang — the vast mountainous and desert region traversed by the Silk Road — as East Turkestan.
Reporting by Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur. Translated by Alim Seytoff. Editing by Paul Eckert.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA.
China’s promotion of tourism in the far-western region of Xinjiang, where Beijing has sought to hide its persecution of the 11 million Uyghurs who live there, has parallels to the Nazis’ practice of “genocide tourism,” a Swedish anthropologist and former diplomat writes in the online current affairs magazine The Diplomat.
After Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and its herding of Jews into concentration camps, a popular German travel guide in 1943 offered tours of the Wilder Osten, or the Wild East, the article by Magnus Fiskesjö recounts.
It spelled out a vision of Lebensraum, or living space, and new resources for Germans after forcing out Jews, Slavs and other undesirables from Central and Eastern Europe.
And even as the Nazis set up death camps to murder Jews, the Warsaw Ghetto became an attraction on orchestrated tours, writes Fiskesjö, who teaches anthropology and Asian studies at Cornell University in New York state.
Likewise, in China’s efforts to promote Xinjiang as a tourist destination, it has sought to cover up its human rights abuses against the Uyghurs by sprucing up buildings, installing new infrastructure and constructing fake historical sites, Fiskesjö writes.
It’s all meant to promote China’s narrative that Uyghurs are living happy, prosperous lives and and benefiting from China’s development, when in fact about 1.8 million of them have been detained in concentration camps and thousands have been sent to prison, often on flimsy charges — behavior that United States and some Western parliaments have labeled a genocide.
China denies those accusations and claims the camps were training facilities and are now mostly closed.
Tourists are flocking to Xinjiang — mostly from within China — and tend to see a sanitized version of life there. Last year, 265 million tourists visited the region, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
Chinese officials have adopted similar practices embraced by the Nazis, who allowed tourists to go to an “occupied zone … under the military and police control so they can channel tourists to safe places where they only see what the government wants them to see,” Fiskesjö told Radio Free Asia.
“It was their attempt to present the situation as normal,” he said. “The Nazi government would say, ‘We have everything under control. There is nothing to worry about, and you can be a tourist.’”
Resettlement strategies
There are other similarities, Fiskesjö says.
Beijing’s strategy of settling Han Chinese in Xinjiang and the forced assimilation of Uyghur children into Chinese culture also mirrors the Nazis’ relocation of people from Germany to occupied territories and their forcible assimilation policies for children taken from their parents to be raised as German, he said.
“Both of these aspects are equally happening in Xinjiang today,” he said.
Fiskesjö also pointed to the ongoing arrests and detentions of Uyghurs, and Chinese settlers taking over farms and homes of those held in camps or prisons.
Most tourists on government-sponsored or designed trips to Xinjiang will stick to designated areas and stay in the same hotels, he said.
“It’s about inviting people and tricking and fooling them into [seeing] this as a normal area, controlled and safe,” Fiskesjö said.
Visitors pose for photos with a giant plastic sculpture of a piece of Uyghur naan bread at the International Grand Bazaar in Urumqi in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, during a government organized visit, April 22, 2021. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
Tourists who go to Xinjiang are convinced that the criticism of China’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs isn’t true, he added.
“This is what is encapsulated in the slogan ‘seeing is believing,’ which the Chinese government has been recycling again and again” with regard to Xinjiang, Fiskesjö said.
‘False narrative’
Experts on Xinjiang concurred with Fiskesjö’s assessment.
“By shaping the tourist experience either through what people see, what people read [and] who they can speak to, China believes that it can use individuals who come to the region to amplify its own narratives,” said Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
When visitors go to Xinjiang, they feel safe and see Uyghurs dancing or participating in other performances; then, after they leave, they will tell others about their experiences, which are meant to counter the arguments of genocide, he said.
The Uyghur Human Rights Project, based in Washington, issued reports in August 2023 and a January 2024 about Western travel companies offering tours to sites in Xinjiang connected to the repression of religious beliefs, the destruction of Uyghur cultural heritage, surveillance, imprisonment, torture, sexual assault and deaths in custody.
U.S. columnist, author and lawyer Gordon Chang said some visitors are willing to whitewash the persecution of the Uyghurs and spread the Chinese government’s narrative that there is no genocide.
“They see what the Communist Party wants them to see, and they know what is occurring,” he told RFA. “Some foreign tourists are just naïve, but many are propagating a narrative that is false. We know that because there is evidence that shows that China is engaging in these crimes against humanity.”
Anders Corr, principal of the New York-based political risk firm Corr Analytics, compared the Xinjiang visits to Soviet propaganda “Potemkin villages” — selected sites designed to demonstrate a façade of success of the Soviet system to outsiders.
Beijing wants to promote ideological beliefs that there is no genocide, that everything is fine, and that the locals are happy and allowed to practice their religion and cultural traditions, he said.
“They’ll try out some Uyghur actors to act happy, and they will try out Uyghur dancers to look happy and tell them to smile, but if [they] don’t smile wide enough, [they] are sent to concentration camps.”
Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Uyghar for RFA Uyghur.
Chinese officials claimed that the Uyghur population in China’s autonomous territory Xinjiang increased at a “significantly higher rate” than the Han population since the first national census in 1953.
But the claim is false. Multiple official sources reviewed by AFCL show that the Han Chinese population growth rate in Xinjiang outstripped Uyghurs both over the decades since 1953 and most recently between 2010 and 2020
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on July 1 that China’s census data showed that the Uyghur population in Xinjiang had grown from “3.6076 million to 11.6243 million” between 1953 to 2020, adding that the growth rate for the Uyghur population was “significantly higher” than the increase of the Han population in the region.
Mao made the remarks in response to a question from a journalist from Japan’s public broadcaster NHK regarding the International Religious Freedom Report released in June by the U.S. State Department that criticized the Chinese government for continuing “genocidal practices” in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in northwest China at the crossroads of Central Asia and East Asia.
The Uyghurs are an ethnic Turkic people originating from, and culturally affiliated with, the general region of Central Asia and the broader Muslim world. They are recognized as the titular nationality of Xinjiang.
The Han Chinese, or the Han people, are an East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. They represent more than 90% of the population of mainland China.
There have been disputes in Xinjiang between Uyghurs and Han Chinese over cultural, religious, and political issues.
Many Uyghurs claim that the Chinese government has engaged in systematic discrimination and ethnic repression in Xinjiang, while Beijing claims that the region needs strict oversight following several attacks carried out by Uyghers who it terms terrorists and extremists.
In 2009, for instance, rioting in Xinjiang’s capital, Ürümqi, broke out as mostly Uyghur demonstrators protested against state-incentivized Han Chinese migration to the region and widespread economic and cultural discrimination.
But Mao’s claim about the Uyghur population growth is false.
Chinse official census
A review of China’s official census figures cited by Mao shows that the rate of growth of the Han Chinese community in Xinjiang exceeded that of the Uyghers.
Chinese census data is based on the number of “permanent residents” of an area, defined as both people born there and long-term migrants settled in a given province or region for more than six months who may or may not decide to settle there permanently.
Although China conducted seven national censuses from 1953 to 2020, AFCL could only find detailed data on the Uyghur and Han populations in Xinjiang from the third census in 1982 to the seventh in 2020.
Over the 38 years between the third and seventh censuses, Xinjiang’s Uyghur population increased from 5,955,900 to 11,624,300 with a net growth rate of 95.17%. During the same period, the Han population in the region grew from 5,286,500 to 10,920,100, resulting in a net growth rate of 106.57%.
The population growth of Han Chinese in Xinjiang between 1982 and 2020 was greater than that for Xinjiang’s Uyghurs. (Data from China National Census Reports, Graphics by AFCL)
A closer look at the population changes between individual census years reveals that Uyghur growth rates significantly exceeded those of the Han Chinese in the 1980s and slightly in the 2000s. However, during the 1990s, the Han population increased at more than double the rate of the Uyghurs and also significantly outpaced them in the 2010s.
When asked to clarify Mao’s remarks, a representative from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to answer directly, referring the AFCL to the Chinese Embassy in the United States.
The embassy has not responded to AFCL’s inquiries as of this writing.
Written by Wu Fuhuan, the former president of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences and a leading expert on Xinjiang history, the book has been recommended by official publications such as Studies on the History of the Chinese Communist Party.
The report contains year-by-year statistics on the population growth for ethnic groups within Xinjiang from 1949 to 2007, citing the Xinjiang Statistical Yearbook as its source of demographic data.
The report’s findings summarized in the below chart show a Han growth rate significantly higher than that of the Uyghers between 1949 and 2009.
Separate official statistics released by Xinjiang show Han Chinese and Uyghurs in Xinjiang between 1949 and 2007. (Data from 1949-2009: A Report on the Development of Ethnic Minorities in Xinjiang, Image by AFCL)
The report shows that between 1949 and 2007, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang nearly tripled, growing from 3,291,100 to 9,650,600. In contrast, the Han population increased over 28-fold during the same period, rising from 291,000 to 8,239,300.
Academic study
The shift in Xinjiang’s ethnic demographics has also been a focus of academic study, such as a 2013 paper by Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi, a professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany.
Joniak-Lüth explained how several waves of Han migrants were brought to Xinjiang following various historical events in the decades following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
She noted that in 1949, Han Chinese made up just over 6% of Xinjiang’s total population, while Uyghurs comprised nearly 75%.
But in the 1950s, China established the state-owned Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, recruiting large numbers of Han migrant workers, especially from the People’s Liberation Army.
This internal migration was further fueled by nationwide famine in the early 1960s, which brought another influx of Han refugees from eastern China to Xinjiang.
Additionally, during the Cultural Revolution from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, hundreds of thousands of young Han intellectuals were sent to live and work in Xinjiang.
Han growth rates in Xinjiang saw a noticeable decline in the decade following major Chinese economic reforms in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, they once again significantly outpaced Uyghur growth rates in the 1990s.
Joniak-Lüthi described post-1980s Han migration to Xinjiang as being “driven by the search for economic profit,” largely organized by individuals and mostly voluntary.
She also noted that due to these waves of Han migrants, Uyghurs likely became a minority in Xinjiang by the mid-2000s.
While China’s official statistics currently show the Uyghur population in Xinjiang as larger than the Han population, some scholars suggest that the actual number of official Han residents is considerably higher, as many Han attempt to delay registering their households in the region for a considerable time after migrating there.
Meanwhile, China’s state-run outlets such as The Global Times, China News and Tianshan Network reported that the Han population in Xinjiang grew by 24.86% over the previous decade, while the Uyghur population increased by only 16.2%, following the release of data for China’s seventh national census in 2021.
Census data used in this fact check was taken from the following sources:
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shen Ke for Asia Fact Check Lab.
Authorities in Xinjiang rearrested the son of a prominent Uyghur businessman two days after he was released from “re-education” in March and days before before his wedding, two relatives with knowledge of the situation told Radio Free Asia.
Abuzer Abdughapar, 24, who worked at a car dealership in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, was rearrested on March 25 by public security authorities, said his uncle Abdusattar Abdurusul, citing information from other relatives in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
He was supposed to get married on May 11, an event to which his relatives in Almaty had been invited, Abdusattar said.
The reason for Abuzer’s arrest is unknown, and authorities have not informed Abuzer’s family about his whereabouts.
Abuzer was first arrested and detained in 2017 in his hometown of Ghulja – or Yining in Chinese – after spending a year studying Turkey. He was sent to a “re-education” camp and released nearly a year later.
His rearrest is an example of how authorities are apprehending Uyghur detainees, who have already served time in “re-education” camps or prisons, under various pretexts to eliminate what Chinese authorities deem “threats to national security.”
Among those rearrested are entrepreneurs and philanthropists, and Uyghurs who have traveled abroad, especially to Muslim countries.
Abdughapar Abdurusul in an undated photo. (Courtesy of Abdusattar Abdurusul)
“I heard there [was] a 100-day clearance going on which entailed the rearrest of people who were arrested and released before,” Abdusattar said. “The Chinese government is trying to erase us.”
Mutallib, the Almaty-based older brother of Abuzer’s grandmother, confirmed the young Uyghur’s rearrest.
“We heard he was arrested on March 25 and that he has not been released,” he said. “The wedding was paused as well. Up to now, we don’t know his whereabouts or the reason for his arrest.”
Chinese police officers at the Public Security Bureau in Urumqi refused to answer questions about Abuzer’s rearrest when contacted by RFA.
Father arrested in 2018
His father tried to bribe authorities in Urumqi to release Abuzer, but they lied to him and disappeared after receiving the money, Abdusattar said.
In 2018, authorities also arrested Abuzer’s father, Abdughapar Abdurusul, a prominent philanthropist and owner of a multimillion-dollar import-export company in Ghulja that does business with Kazakhstan, for taking an unsanctioned Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and “tax evasion,” Abdusattar said. They also detained Abuzer’s mother, Merhaba.
The family’s fixed assets, companies and houses worth more than several hundred million dollars were confiscated, he said.
Merhaba later died in a “re-education” camp. Abdughapar had been sentenced to death, but was released in 2020, said his older brother Abdusattar, a businessman who lives in Europe.
Abdusattar said he believes that Abuzer and Abdughapar were released after he went public about their detentions via Western media, including RFA.
Authorities re-arrested Abdughapara second time in summer 2021, but released him a few months later, his brother said. The cause of his arrest is unknown.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur.
A well-known Uyghur entrepreneur who set up an international trading company in Xinjiang is serving a life sentence for his alleged involvement with extremists abroad, people with knowledge of the situation told RFA Uyghur.
Ablikim Kurban, who would now be about 46 years old, established the Xinjiang Sesame Seed International Trade Co. in Urumqi in April 2017 and began selling imported seeds.
Prior to setting up his business, Kurban had visited factories and companies in Egypt. While there, he also met with Uyghur students from his hometown of Kumul, called Hami in Chinese, who were attending Al-Azhar University in Cairo.
Muslim-majority Egypt is among several countries blacklisted by Chinese authorities for travel by Uyghurs because of a perceived threat of religious extremism.
Chinese authorities pointed to Kurban’s trip and his alleged involvement with “terrorists” as the reason for his arrest on July 8, 2017, a Xinjiang police officer and a security chief on the neighborhood committee where Kurban previously lived in Kumul told RFA.
Relatives said they still don’t know his whereabouts.
Kurban was one of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs arrested during China’s roundup and mass detentions of Muslims in “re-education” camps across Xinjiang, which began around 2017, in the name of fighting terrorism and religious extremism.
Uyghurs like Kurban who traveled to other Muslim-majority countries were especially at risk of being detained on unproven grounds that they had been in contact with what Chinese authorities claimed were terrorists or extremists.
A police officer who is based in Kumul’s Taranchi coal mine district, where Kurban used to work, told Radio Free Asia that authorities detained him in 2017 because of his trip to Egypt.
“They didn’t tell us the reason prior to his arrest, we only learned about it after he was arrested,” she said.
“He was arrested for getting involved with an extremist organization in Egypt,” she said, adding that the information came from state security police.
In some cases, authorities held parents hostage by locking them up until their children returned, and some students who did go back disappeared or were jailed, sources in Xinjiang and Egypt told RFA in a May 2017 report.
Authorities in Egypt collaborated with Chinese authorities to round up scores of Uyghur students — many of them studying religion at Al-Azhar — and detain and deport them, according to the report.
A resident of the Taranchi coal mine district told RFA that Kurban was focused on his business and his family and had no interest in politics.
The resident, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, said authorities also arrested Kurban’s wife, Gulshan Tohti, a month after detaining him, leaving a grandmother to care for the couple’s three children.
Tohti was released in August 2023, though it is unknown what she was charged with and whether she spent six years of detainment in an internment camp or prison.
Kurban initially followed in his father’s footsteps after graduating from high school and became a miner in Taranchi, which is in eastern Xinjiang.
He had greater ambitions though, and in the early 2000s he founded a factory in Kumul that produced plastic doors and windows, becoming one of the most successful entrepreneurs in his hometown.
In 2015, Kurban decided to shift his business to food imports. But his arrest and detention in 2017 cut his plans short, and Xinjiang Sesame Seed International Trade was shut down.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Jim Snyder.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.
Uyghurs marked the 15th anniversary of deadly ethnic violence in Xinjiang by demonstrating outside U.N. offices in Switzerland and Chinese diplomatic missions in various cities around the world, demanding that the international community stop China from committing genocide in the far-western region.
The protests came on July 5, a day after member states blasted China over its human rights record — and particularly about its persecution of mostly Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which Uyghurs refer to as East Turkistan — during a review of China’s rights record at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Uyghur exile and advocacy groups believe that the United Nations and individual states have failed to take concrete measures to punish China for severe rights violations in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, torture, cultural genocide, forced labor and the forced sterilization of Uyghur women.
China denies it has committed rights abuses against the 11 million strong Uyghurs.
In Istanbul, Turkey, which has a sizable Uyghur community, protesters gathered outside the Chinese consulate, waving the blue-and-white flag of East Turkistan and shouting, “Get out of East Turkistan” and “East Turkistan, not Xinjiang!”
“We insist that the truth of the genocide in East Turkistan must be recognized by all countries and the U.N. General Assembly, and it should be acknowledged under the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on the Prevention of Genocide,” Hidayatullah Oguz Khan, chairman of the International Union of East Turkistan Organizations, said at a press conference at the protest.
“To end the genocide and occupation, and to achieve results for the legitimate struggle of the East Turkistan people, it is imperative to accept and support the legitimacy of this struggle,” he said.
Uyghurs also rallied on July 5 in front of Chinese diplomatic missions in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and in various European countries to commemorate the 2009 crackdown in Urumqi, where some 200 people died and 1,700 were injured in a three-day rampage of violence between Uyghurs and Han Chinese, according to Chinese government figures. However, Uyghur human rights groups believe the actual number killed was about 1,000.
The event became a catalyst for the Chinese government’s efforts to repress Uyghur culture, language and religion through a mass surveillance and internment campaign.
Mixed reviews
At the review of China’s human rights record in Geneva on July 4, some Human Rights Council representatives criticized Beijing for refusing to act on previous recommendations to clean up its act.
In 2022, a report by then-U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, who visited Xinjiang, said China’s mass detentions of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the region may constitute crimes against humanity.
Chinese state media portrayed the rights record review as a success, with countries such as Russia, Venezuela and Vietnam praising Beijing’s efforts to protect and promote human rights.
And many Muslim-majority countries have remained silent about China’s treatment of the Uyghurs.
Chen Xu, China’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said the recommendations rejected by Beijing were “politically motivated based on disinformation, ideologically biased or interfering in China’s traditional sovereignty,” Voice of America reported.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Habibulla Izchi for RFA Uyghur.
Two earthen pillars, eroded by sand, in barren terrain are all that’s left of an ancient Buddhist temple in the far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang.
Chinese historians and archaeologists assert that a 7th century Chinese empress ordered the construction of the Mor Temple — known locally as Mora, or “chimney” in the Uyghur language — one one of the earliest Buddhist sites in the region.
The ruins show China’s influence in shaping the history and culture of the region — home today to 11 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs — going back centuries, state-run media said.
“They are a powerful testimony to the diversity, unity and inclusiveness of Chinese civilization,” according to a June 3 report by the China News Service.
But experts outside China dispute those claims, saying the Mor Stupa, or pagoda, and other temple structures were built in more of an Indian style.
And it’s highly unlikely that Wu Zetian, empress from 690-705 CE during the Tang Dynasty, was involved in the construction of pagodas because it was hundreds of miles away from her court in central China, they say.
Instead, the Chinese government-backed research may be driven more by Beijing’s efforts to expand its cultural influence in the region, where it is actively seeking to Sinicize Uyghur culture and Muslim practices, they said.
A view of the Qigexing Buddhist Temple ruins in Yanqi Hui Autonomous County, northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, Oct. 4, 2012. (Rolfmueller via Wikimedia Commons)
“Empress Wu, the famous female emperor of that time, was avidly promoting Buddhism but not necessarily was she promoting it out in Xinjiang,” said Johan Elverskog, a professor of history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and author of the book A History of Uyghur Buddhism.
“There is no way that the Tang was involved in building things that far to the west,” he said.
Before Islam
Before Islam arrived in China in the 7th century, Buddhism did flourish in what China today calls Xinjiang, or “New Territories” — but which the Uyghurs refer to as East Turkistan, the name of the Uyghur nation that briefly existed in the mid-20th century.
Western archaeologists and Buddhism researchers believe that Buddhism began to spread to Xinjiang during the Kushan Empire, which controlled the western and northern Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang andruled over parts of what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan and India between the 1st century BCE and the 3rd century CE.
Some historical documents show Buddhism spread to the region from Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, Elverskog said, while other documents indicate that the Kingdom of Khotan, in present-day Hotan, adopted Buddhism as the official state religion in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
Archaeological digs at the Mor Temple — about 30 kilometers (19 miles) northeast of Kashgar — since 2019 have determined that the original complex was built in the 3rd century, according to the China News Service report.
It said that elements of Chinese architecture appeared between the 7th and 10th centuries, indicating the prevalence of Chinese Buddhism.
Artifacts discovered around the site reflect Indian and Central Asian Buddhist traditions as well as the influence of the Central Plains, an area along the Yellow River that is believed to be the cradle of Chinese civilization, it said.
But Elverskog said that while there was a Chinese military presence in the region during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), no Buddhist temples were built.
‘United’ by Chinese culture
The idea that Uyghur culture, including its ancient Buddhist history and structures, should be supplanted by Chinese culture was summed up in a speech by Pan Yue, head of the State Council’s National Ethnic Affairs Commission, at an international forum on Xinjiang’s history and future held in June in Kashgar.
“Although Xinjiang’s culture is diverse, it exists in unity, and the most important factor that unites them is Chinese culture,” said Pan, who has been in his role since June 2022.
“Xinjiang should be studied from the perspective of the common history of the Chinese nation and the multipolar unity of the Chinese nation, and Xinjiang should be understood from the perspective of a region where many cultures and religions coexist and ethnic groups live together,” he said.
A view of the perimeter wall of the Rawak Stupa, a Buddhist stupa with modern stone protection, situated on the southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China’s Xinjiang province, Nov. 17, 2008. (Vic Swift via Wikimedia Commons)
Kahar Barat, a Uyghur-American historian known for his work on Buddhism and Islam in Xinjiang, said there was “absolutely no Chinese influence” in the Buddhist culture of places like Kashgar and Kucha, another city that once had many Buddhist temples.
He said Kashgar and Kucha were part of the Hindu-Greek Gandhara Buddhist culture that existed in present-day Pakistan from the 3rd century BCE to the 12th century CE.
“They call it the Gandhara art,” he said. “It’s the Gandhara culture created by the Buddhism developed in Kashmir and Pakistan. Therefore, the Buddha paintings and temples in Hotan, Kashgar, Kucha have the influence of Gandhara culture.”
Furthermore, Buddhist temples during the Tang Dynasty were modeled after those in India, making it an exaggeration to say that the Mor Stupa and other temple structures reflected the architectural style of that era, he said.
“Pavilion-style construction is a style of India Buddhism,” he told RFA. “Hence, all the pavilions in China are inspired by these styles. The building styles in the Han Dynasty were later influenced by Buddhist vihara-style construction.”
Elverskog agreed that the Mor Temple was built in Indian style.
“It’s obviously based on precedence in northwest India,” he said. “That was the main source of the Buddhist culture in Hotan and particularly coming from India. … So the Buddhism, the iconography, the artwork, was heavily based on northwestern Indian models.”
Xia Ming, a political science professor at the College of Staten Island in New York, said China’s interpretation of historical Uyghur Buddhism as part of Chinese Buddhism shows the tendency of the Chinese Communist Party to seek its current legitimacy from Chinese dynasties dating back thousands of years.
“If you look at the thousands of years of Chinese history,” he said, “you will see that the Chinese Communist Party will pick and choose any historical node and talk about it if it is useful to them.”
Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jilil Kashgary for RFA Uyghur.
