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Category: Xinjiang

  • Canadian ambassador’s visit to Xinjiang draws China’s ire

    Canada’s ambassador to China expressed concern over documented human rights violations against Uyghurs with top officials during a visit to Xinjiang, sparking criticism from the Chinese Embassy in Canada that said her concerns were based on “fabricated rumors and reports with ulterior motives.”

    Ambassador Jennifer May visited the far-western region on June 19-22 and met with Xinjiang Party Secretary Ma Xingrui and other senior regional government officials, according to a statement issued by Global Affairs Canada, the government department that manages diplomatic relations.

    Very few Western diplomats have visited Xinjiang in recent years. It was the first visit to the region by a Canadian diplomat in 10 years. Last August, a group of diplomats from Mexico, Pakistan, Iran and other countries visited the region as part of a government-sponsored tour.

    May went to Xinjiang as part of Canada’s diplomatic engagement with China and to raise concerns “over credible reports of systematic violations of human rights occurring in Xinjiang” affecting Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples, the statement said.

    Specific concerns included restrictions on Uyghur-language education and the forced placement of Uyghur children in boarding schools, it said, but did not provide detail about the places May visited or what she saw.

    In February 2021, Canada’s House of Commons passed a motion declaring the Chinese government’s mistreatment of Uyghurs — including the arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in state-sponsored camps, the use of Uyghur forced labor, the suppression of Uyghur religious practices, and the forced sterilization of women — a genocide. 

    May also repeated Canada’s calls for China to allow U.N. independent experts unfettered access to all regions of the country, including Xinjiang, the statement said.

    “Until an independent investigation team can visit, assess the situation, and release an unbiased report, Canada is signaling that China’s propaganda and staged displays showing Uyghurs as content are ineffective and disregarded,” said Memet Tohti, executive director of the Ottawa-based Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.

    Jennifer May, Canada’s ambassador to China, appears on CTVNews, June 18, 2024. (CTVNews screenshot)
    Jennifer May, Canada’s ambassador to China, appears on CTVNews, June 18, 2024. (CTVNews screenshot)

    A 2022 report by the then-U.N. Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet, who visited Xinjiang, found that China’s mass detentions of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the region may constitute crimes against humanity. Uyghur rights groups criticized the tightly organized trip as a staged tour.

    Beijing has denied accusations of severe rights violations. 

    May’s visit coincided a call by international human rights organizations and Uyghur advocacy groups on June 20 for the U.N.’s current human rights chief, Volker Türk, to provide a public update of measures taken by the  Chinese government and his office to address the situation in Xinjiang.

    ‘Same old rhetoric’

    On Monday, the Chinese Embassy in Canada issued a statement saying that Canada “repeated the same old rhetoric, expressing so-called concerns based on fabricated rumors and reports with ulterior motives, without mentioning what Ambassador May really saw and heard in Xinjiang.”

    The embassy urged Canada to be objective and unbiased and to show Canadians what May saw during her visit. It also said that Xinjiang enjoys social stability, economic prosperity, ethnic unity and religious harmony.

    “Human rights of people of all ethnic groups, including their right to use and advance their own ethnic languages, are fully protected,” the embassy said.

    “Canada has repeatedly made unwarranted remarks about other countries’ human rights situation, while turning a blind eye to its own racial issues,” the embassy went on to say, citing systemic racial discrimination and unfair treatment of indigenous people, homeless people whose rights are not protected, and racial discrimination against Black civil servants in the federal government.

    Canada has long upheld human rights protections and has voiced its concerns about them periodically, said John Packer, a law professor and director of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa.  

    “This has been a contentious part of the relationship because China does not share the same perspective and considers these issues a matter of internal affairs, feeling it is inappropriate for Canada to raise them,” he told Radio Free Asia.

    Because Canada and China are parties to international treaties, including human rights agreements such as the U.N. Charter and the Genocide Convention, they are bound by certain multilateral standards, making it legitimate to discuss such matters in international forums and in bilateral relations, Packer 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 Jewlan for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China changes names of 630 Uyghur villages in Xinjiang: report

    China has changed the names of about 630 Uyghur villages to Mandarin words such as “Harmony” and “Unity” to promote ethnic harmony in Xinjiang, a report by a human rights group found,

    The move is “part of Chinese government’s efforts to erase the cultural and religious expression” of the more than 11 million predominantly Muslim Uyghurs living in China’s far-western Xinjiang region, New York-based Human Rights Watch, or HRW, said in its June 18 report.

    “How these village names are being kind of erased and replaced shows how dystopian the whole project of the Chinese government in the Uyghur region is,” Maya Wang, acting China director at HRW.

    “It’s about repressing people and … the past, and erasing the future, and erasing what they can imagine as a possibility for their own children or grandchildren,” she said.1_ENG_UYG_HRW-VILLAGE-NAME-CHANGES_06212024.jpg

    The results came after HRW and Norway-based Uyghur Hjelp scraped names of villages in Xinjiang from the website of China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

    All told, China hanged the names of 3,652 of 25,000 Uyghur villages in Xinjiang between 2009 and 2023, but most of these changes have been mundane, such as correcting numbers or the way the names were written, they found.

    But 630 of the changes were more dramatic and religious, cultural or historical in nature. And most renamings occurred between 2017 and 2019, when the Chinese government’s repression escalated in the region, the report said, but they appear to be continuing.

    ‘Erasing symbols’

    For example, Aq Meschit, or “White Mosque,” village in Akto county, Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture, was renamed Unity village in 2018.

    The same year, Hoja Eriq, or “Sufi Teacher’s Creek,” village in Aksu Prefecture was rechristened Willow village.

    And Dutar, a village named after a Uyghur musical instrument, in Qaraqash county of Hotan prefecture, was renamed Red Flag in 2022.

    The Chinese government has used the village renamings along with other tactics, including the banning of hijabs for women, beards for men, and Muslim names for children, to wipe out Uyghur culture and to humiliate the ethnic group, Wang said.

    “On a very fundamental level, erasing the symbols of people, the language and culture is about erasing who they are and teaching them to fear,” she said.  

    The village renamings are also part of the greater set of serious rights abuses and crimes against humanity involving the detentions of an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic people in “re-education” camps, torture, forced labor, sexual violence and the forced sterilization of woman, Wang said.

    Uyghur children play in a square where a propaganda poster shows Han Chinese and Uyghurs posing together in a photograph with the words 'Hotan City Unity New Village Unity Square' at the Unity New Village in Hotan, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, Sept. 20, 2018. (Andy Wong/AP)
    Uyghur children play in a square where a propaganda poster shows Han Chinese and Uyghurs posing together in a photograph with the words ‘Hotan City Unity New Village Unity Square’ at the Unity New Village in Hotan, northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, Sept. 20, 2018. (Andy Wong/AP)

    Campaign for Uyghurs, a Washington-based Uyghur advocacy group, condemned the village renamings.

    “The names, which have now been changed to empty CCP [Chinese Communist Party] slogans, once reflected our long history and rich culture and have been in our homeland for hundreds of years,” said Rushan Abbas, the group’s executive director, in a statement.

    “Although the CCP appears to celebrate Uyghur culture by showcasing elements like our music and dance, these displays are nothing but hollow propaganda masking the regime’s ongoing and systematic suppression of cultural and religious expression,” Abbas said.

    In response to such measures, foreign governments, especially those in Muslim-majority nations, can put pressure on the Chinese government to stop its abuses involving religious and ethnic minorities and condemn such behavior, said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington.

    Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcom Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China has renamed hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns, say human rights groups

    Report finds that religious, historical and cultural references have been removed in crackdown by Beijing

    Hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns have been renamed by Chinese authorities to remove religious or cultural references, with many replaced by names reflecting Communist party ideology, a report has found.

    Research published on Wednesday by Human Rights Watch and the Norway-based organisation Uyghur Hjelp documents about 630 communities that have been renamed in this way by the government, mostly during the height of a crackdown on Uyghurs that several governments and human rights bodies have called a genocide.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Labor urged to put China’s human rights record before trade and demand concrete action

    Anthony Albanese should seek commitments for tangible measures in his talks with Li Qiang, campaigners say

    Human rights advocates have called on Anthony Albanese to place China’s human rights record ahead of economic and trade discussions in his meeting with China’s second most powerful leader on Monday.

    They said it was time for Australia’s Labor government to demand concrete action from China in addressing human rights complaints against it as “statements of concern” were not achieving results.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • In Xinjiang, China’s security chief calls for normalization of counterterrorism steps

    In a visit to the far-western region of Xinjiang, China’s security chief Chen Wenqing called for the normalization of counterterrorism policies, which experts said could signal renewed efforts to suppress the more than 11 million Uyghurs who live there.

    During his May 22-26 visit, Chen — a former head of China’s Ministry of State Security espionage agency — stressed the need for persistent law-based crackdowns on violent and terrorist crimes and called for political and legal bodies to make social stability a top priority, according to Chinese media reports.

    On May 27, the day after his visit ended, China’s Ministry of Public Security said in a statement that the country had not had a terrorist attack in more than seven years.

    Chen Quanguo, Xinjiang's party secretary, speaks during a meeting of the Xinjiang delegation at the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 12, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP)
    Chen Quanguo, Xinjiang’s party secretary, speaks during a meeting of the Xinjiang delegation at the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 12, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP)

    Still, Beijing has made no major policy changes in Xinjiang and remains highly interested in stabilizing the region, said Anders Corr, principal of political risk analysis firm Corr Analytics in New York.

    “They continue to prioritize so-called terrorism when there is no terrorism, and there never really were actual terrorists at all in Xinjiang,” he said. “And so, that’s the unfortunate issue when they say that they’re normalizing counterterrorism.”

    The Washington-based advocacy group Campaign for Uyghurs said Chen’s call to further normalize counterterrorism efforts suggested continued and possibly increased surveillance, restrictions and arbitrary detentions of Uyghurs. 

    “Chen Wenqing’s statement is a blatant admission that the Chinese Communist Party intends to perpetuate a permanent campaign of genocide against the Uyghurs,” said Rushan Abbas, the group’s executive director in a statement.

    “Instead of addressing international scrutiny, they are doubling down on their efforts,” she said. “The international community must see through the CCP’s propaganda and euphemisms, which justify their horrific crimes as ‘counterterrorism measures.’”

    A Uyghur woman passes an old disused mosque in Artush, capital of Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture, in northwestern China's Xinjiang region, July 19, 2023. (Pedro Pardo/AFP)
    A Uyghur woman passes an old disused mosque in Artush, capital of Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture, in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, July 19, 2023. (Pedro Pardo/AFP)

    The Chinese government ramped up its suppression of Uyghur and other Turkic peoples in Xinjiang beginning in 2017 with mass detentions of an estimated 1.8 million in “re-reeducation” camps that China claimed were vocational training schools to prevent “terrorism” and “religious extremism.”

    Because of the mass detentions and other severe human rights violations, including the forced sterilization of Uyghur women and forced Uyghur labor, the U.S. government, European Parliament and the legislatures of the and some Western countries have declared that the measures constitute genocide and crimes against humanity — accusations denied by Beijing.

    Chen Quanguo, Xinjiang’s party secretary from August 2016 to December 2021, oversaw the mass imprisonment of Uyghurs. But under Ma Xingrui, China’s current Communist Party secretary in Xinjiang, the goal is the “legalization and normalization of counter-terrorism stability maintenance work,” said Adrian Zenz, senior fellow and director in China studies at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

    “Normalization and institutionalization are very much what the CCP pursues in Xinjiang,” Zenz told Radio Free Asia, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. “Long-term counterterrorism is part of that. This also fits with the continued waves of detentions that we hear about.”

    Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Uyghar and Alim Seytoff for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Uyghur woman who complained about land grab arrested by authorities in Xinjiang

    A Uyghur woman was arrested last month after she posted a video on social media complaining that authorities had seized her land in Xinjiang, leaving her without means to eke out a living, the security director of her village said.

    The woman, identified only as Belikiz, 35, from Astana village in Kumul, called Hami in Chinese, said authorities confiscated her land at the end of 2023 to implement a policy of “concentrating land in the hands of agricultural experts.” 

    She expressed despair over the Chinese government’s unwillingness to resolve the issue in the video on Douyin, a Chinese video-sharing platform.  

    “Even if the land was allocated to us by the government, we’ve invested 3-4 years cultivating it,” she says in the video. “Why won’t the government advocate for us farmers? If you doubt my words, just look at those machines tearing up our farmlands.” 

    “How are we supposed to sustain our livelihoods and send our children to school?” she asked. “Isn’t there a country that can support us? Is there no organization we can turn to for help?”

    ‘Systematic confiscation’

    For years, authorities in Xinjiang have seized land and property from Uyghurs to make way for development projects run by Han Chinese migrants. Those who lose land often have little or no recourse for adequate compensation or justice because of high levels of collusion between local officials and developers.

    Uyghurs complain that the migrants have displaced them from their traditional homeland and deprived them of financial opportunities under harsh Beijing rule.

    Police quickly deleted the video from Douyin not long after it was uploaded and arrested Belikiz on April 15, said Astana village’s security director, who declined to be named out of fear of retribution. 

    He said he learned of the woman’s arrest about 20 days later and that authorities apprehended her because of a complaint letter she previously submitted to the government about the issue.

    It was unclear whether her arrest was directly related to the video addressing the land seizure, he added. 

    “The systematic confiscation of land from Uyghurs has been an ongoing issue for a long time,” said a Uyghur former police officer who now lives Sweden. “We owe our insight into these injustices to the courage of individuals who bravely share their stories through videos like these.”

    ‘Keep tormenting us’

    Belikiz initially set up two bookstores after graduating from high school because she failed the national college entrance examination, the village security director said. 

    But when business endeavors were unsuccessful, she turned to farming, he said. 

    Belikiz had farmed on about 7-8 mu of land for the past 1-2 years. The Chinese unit of land measurement varies with location but is commonly equal to 0.165 acre, so she had less than two acres.

    After area officials confiscated the land, which constituted all her capital, Belikiz recorded the video on Douyin about the issues she and other Uyghur farmers in Kumul and the rest of Xinjiang faced.

    “Are they going to keep tormenting us just because the government is powerful?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it be better if we were spared from all this suffering?” 

    The Uyghur former police officer who lives in Sweden noted that no land is safe from seizure. 

    “The Chinese government can seize land from individuals at any given moment, under any pretext,” he said, declining to be named for fear of retaliation. 

    Individuals cannot privately own land and natural resources, according to China’s  constitution and land laws. The Constitution specifies that land in urban areas must be owned by the state, while land in rural and suburban areas must be owned by the state or by local collectives.

    “The video depicting the anguish of a farmer woman in Kumul following the loss of her land is a stark reminder of this reality,” the former policeman said.

    Other locations

    Similar land-grab incidents also have occurred in Ghulja, a county-level city in northwestern Xinjiang, called Yining in Chinese.

    Since the 2000s, Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have carried out “development measures” by “concentrating land in the hands of agriculturalists.”

    The policy allowed Han Chinese migrants to seize Uyghur farmland and force Uyghurs to work as laborers on the same plots.

    “Regardless of the reason, openly voicing complaints against the Chinese oppressors or making any form of complaint is considered a violation of the law,” the former policeman said.

    “While [Belikiz] managed to upload a video discussing her hardships, millions of others in our homeland cannot,” he said. 

    Zumrat Dawut, a former Uyghur internment camp detainee who was forcibly sterilized but now lives in the United States, said she managed to downloaded Belikiz’s video to her phone even though it had been removed from Douyin.

    Dawut resorted to alternative methods to download the video and then uploaded it to Facebook so more people could view it.

    “Reporters and media outlets following my feed inquired about the woman in the video, asking why she was crying and what had occurred,” Dawut told Radio Free Asia.

    She expressed admiration for Belikiz’s courage, but voiced concern about potential consequences she might face. 

    Dawut urged human rights groups and Uyghur advocacy groups to monitor Belikiz’s situation and the repercussions she might face for speaking out.

    “This woman has taken a tremendous risk to raise her voice,” 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 Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • INTERVIEW: Lawyer debunks China’s historical narrative of control over Xinjiang

    China’s far-western region of Xinjiang — called East Turkestan by Uyghurs — is a essentially a colony that China has occupied for the past 70 years, but before that there has not been any continuous Chinese rule there going back 2,000 years – despite Chinese claims, according to Michael van Walt, an international lawyer who has studied the region extensively.

    Van Walt, who has specialized in inner Asia and East Asian relations for the past 15 years and works to resolve conflicts in different parts of the world, presented his findings at 20th anniversary commemoration of the World Uyghur Congress in Munich, Germany, on May 3-6. 

    In an interview with RFA Uyghur Director Alim Seytoff, van Walt discussed his research. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    RFA: In your presentation, you said that East Turkestan is a colony of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese government claims that Xinjiang has been an inseparable part of China since ancient times. How do you interpret this latter claim, based on your research?  

    Michael van Walt: It’s very clear that there has not been any continuous Chinese rule or authority in Eastern Turkestan over the last 2,000 years. Only during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) and the Tang Dynasty (618-907) was there some presence. Before the Republic of China was established, Eastern Turkestan was ruled by various khanates, mainly from neighboring parts of Asia, but definitely not Han. 

    RFA: When we refer to China, it’s understood that China has existed for thousands of years, and that there has been one country called China, dynasty after dynasty. Is this understanding correct? 

    Michael van Walt: No, it isn’t, and this is what is causing a lot of confusion. What the People’s Republic of China has done, and the Republic of China before it, was to create this idea. There was this national history of China that was projected back into history for thousands of years, as if China had existed as a political entity, as a state, for thousands of years, which it definitely has not.

    There have been a number of Han states, empires and dynasties, but the Han people have been ruled not just by Han states, but by many Inner Asian empires as well. 

    What we call China today was just part of the Manchu empire of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) and the same with numerous others much earlier. So, the present way in which so-called Chinese history is presented — but also, presented sometimes by Western and other scholars — is misleading in that way. It makes it confusing. 

    And particularly because we use the words “China” and “Chinese,” which can mean many different things. 

    Today, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] uses the word “China” in Chinese to actually mean all the people that are within what it claims to be the borders of the PRC, whether they are Han Chinese, Tibetan or Uyghur. 

    But other people use the word “Chinese” essentially to mean Han Chinese and the Chinese language, and the Chinese script to mean the Mandarin script. So, we’re using that word without being precise about what we mean. 

    Michael van Walt presents his findings at 20th anniversary commemoration of the World Uyghur Congress in Munich, Germany, May 4, 2024. (Bahram Sintash/RFA)
    Michael van Walt presents his findings at 20th anniversary commemoration of the World Uyghur Congress in Munich, Germany, May 4, 2024. (Bahram Sintash/RFA)

    If we are being precise, then really the concept of China as a state was imagined in 1911, discussed in 1911, and created in the beginning of 1912 with the Republic of China. 

    Before that, there were other states with different names, different structures and different principles of governance, which had very little in common with the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China. 

    From a legal perspective, those two things are completely different. You cannot talk about the continuity of a state for 2,000 years. It just doesn’t exist. I’m not denying that there was Chinese culture for 2,000 years or 5,000, whatever it may be. I’m not denying there weren’t any Han people. All of this is possible. But not continuous or a continuous stream of Han states. 

    RFA: Why does the Chinese government make this claim, that Manchuria, southern Mongolia, Tibet and East Turkestan were part of China since ancient times? 

    Van Walt: I can’t think for them, but it would seem that the idea was first developed by the Republic of China precisely because it wanted to claim those Inner Asian territories as part of the Republic of China. It needed to develop a rationale for that, needed to develop an excuse for that that would be acceptable. So, they invented this history. 

    Today, I think the PRC insists on that history and that historical narrative precisely because it does not want to be seen as a colonial power in Eastern Turkestan, Tibet and in Inner Mongolia.

    RFA: So, was the first state called “China” established only in 1912, and before that there were different dynasties and empires under different names that had nothing to do with China as a political entity? 

    Van Walt: No, and the words zhongguo and zhonghua that are used for the name “China” or for “Chinese” existed before for a long time, but they had a different meaning. They had a meaning of “central state” — the central high culture people radiating wisdom and culture out into civilization. 

    These were civilizational and spatial concepts, not names of states or of a country. Those words were used, and they were transformed to become a label, as a name. Then they were paired to be equivalent to the word “China” in English or “Chine” in French — the Western concept of China, which Europeans had already for a long time mistakenly imagined to be this continuous China, this imaginary country. By pairing the two, it’s made it very difficult, especially for Westerners and Europeans to conceive of the notion that there was not this continuous China because it already existed in our imagination. 

    RFA: Are Beijing’s claims akin to, hypothetically speaking, Italy claiming that territories occupied by the Roman Empire were part of the country today? Is China’s rationale similar to this?

    Michael van Walt: It is a similar rationale, but there’s a distinction. If they really were to do that, they would claim what the Romans had conquered and what they themselves had conquered in the past. What the PRC claims is what the Mongols and Manchus conquered, not what the Han conquered. So, an illogical thing to do. 

    It’s quite aside from the fact that today in the modern world you cannot claim territory on the basis of some historical claim from 1,000 years ago, 500 years ago or even 100 years ago, which China does. But you certainly can’t claim it on the basis of what another empire did that happened to conquer you. 

    Michael van Walt presents his findings at 20th anniversary commemoration of the World Uyghur Congress in Munich, Germany, May 4, 2024. (Bahram Sintash/RFA)
    Michael van Walt presents his findings at 20th anniversary commemoration of the World Uyghur Congress in Munich, Germany, May 4, 2024. (Bahram Sintash/RFA)

    But the PRC has been able to convince many that whoever ruled what I call the Han homeland — the Han people and their territory — somehow became Chinese or Han. This notion that the Mongols and Manchus were actually Chinese is absurd. 

    The fact that today the PRC calls Genghis Khan a great son of China is absurd. Genghis Khan is the one who ordered the conquest of China, not as a son of China, but as a son of the Mongols.

    RFA: Is China technically exercising colonial rule in the Uyghur homeland by plundering natural resources and by settling Han Chinese into the territories? Is this part of the reason why China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs? 

    Van Walt: Yes, it is. It is afraid of losing control over Eastern Turkestan and is trying to suppress Uyghurs and others in Eastern Turkestan. It’s a way of trying to maintain control. Xi Jinping and his government in particular are bent on absolute control. That is the most important policy objective, so everything is driven by that. And if it means putting millions of people in internment camps, eradicating the cultures of the Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongolians, and to have absolute control over these territories, then so be it. That is their objective. 

    As for wanting to control all the territories of the former Qing Empire, they have not finished their objective yet. They still need to achieve that. They will want to control Taiwan, the South China Sea, northern India, and probably parts of today’s Russia, including Tuva and Boryatia, because at some point some Mongol or Manchu ruler ruled some of those areas. 

    And if we were to go into the absurd, let’s remember that the Mongols ruled most of the Eurasian continent all the way to Hungary, the Middle East and India. We wouldn’t really want to see China claim everything that the great son of China, Genghis Khan, achieved.

    Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alim Seytoff for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Uyghur spy turns to religion and lands in Xinjiang prison

    A Uyghur official who spied on fellow Uyghurs in Xinjiang is serving a seven-year prison sentence on the charge of religious extremism after he was moved by Muslim sermons and gave up smoking and drinking alcohol, area authorities said.

    The change of heart in Yasin Tursun, a Chinese Communist Party member and secretary of Terim village in southern Xinjiang’s Peyziwat county, pleased his family but upset authorities, the sources said, insisting they not be identified for security reasons. 

    After struggling to find a reason to arrest and convict him, authorities accused him of being “two-faced” and sentenced him to prison in October 2019, two policemen and a county official told Radio Free Asia. He is estimated to be about 55 now.

    Tursun’s case highlights how Beijing has clamped down harshly on the mostly Muslim Uyghurs, and their religious practices — including prayer and abstaining from alcohol and fasting during the month of Ramadan — in the far-western region of Xinjiang in the name of suppressing religious extremism and terrorism. 

    It also shows how Chinese authorities have enlisted Uyghurs to spy on their own people. 

    ‘Two-faced’

    When Tursun ended up embracing Muslim practices, authorities in 2017 fell back on the common accusation of being “two-faced” — used by the Chinese Communist Party to describe officials or party members who are either corrupt or ideologically disloyal to the party. 

    Among Uyghurs, it is applied to those who show an interest in carrying on their cultural and religious traditions. In Tursun’s case, authorities were upset that he gave up alcohol and tobacco, promoted their abstinence and listened to Muslim sermons, the sources said.

    Tursun was handed over to the authorities, and following an investigation was sentenced to seven years in prison, they said.  

    Some village cadres — including Tursun — who worked as spies had unexpectedly inspiring experiences at secret and public religious events, said an official from Peyziwat county, called Jiashi in Chinese.

    They were moved by the orderliness and kindness at these gatherings, as well as by the eloquent speeches of religious leaders and their insightful interpretations of the world, humanity and life, said the official, asking not to be identified.

    This caused some of the Uyghur cadres to disengage from their work activities, and even resign, he said.

    ‘Swayed’ by religion

    One police officer from Terim village said all former Uyghur cadres from the the second sub-village had been arrested. 

    “We had 10-16 cadres, but now there are none left,” he told RFA.

    The security director of Terim’s fifth sub-village said two “two-faced” Uyghur cadres, including Tursun, had been influenced by “religious extremism.” 

    Tursun was arrested for his association with religious individuals, while the other cadre, Rahman Ghopur, about 33 years old, was arrested for promoting the idea of not crying at funerals, he said.

    Tursun was removed from his role because of “bad habits” such as abstaining from alcohol, the security director said.

    “Yasin Tursun was removed from his position because he made his wife wear modest clothes and he himself grew a beard,” he told RFA. “The investigation indicated that he had been influenced by religious individuals. I heard he was swayed while working at religious events.”

    The security director said he was in the courtroom when Tursun was sentenced for “religious extremism,” and that others who were listed among his mobile phone contacts faced similar circumstances.

    A second officer from the police station in Terim said Tursun’s previous lifestyle of spying had nearly destroyed his family, but after he embraced religion, his relationships with his wife and children improved.

    Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Arab politicians praise China’s policies in Xinjiang

    A delegation of Palestinian and other Arab politicians praised China’s policies in Xinjiang during a visit to the northwestern region, sparking criticism from experts and Uyghur rights advocates for not highlighting the plight of fellow Muslims living in the region.

    The delegation was led by Bassam Zakarneh, a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council of Palestine and made up of politicians from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan and Tunisia, according to a report by the Global Times. 

    On March 27, Xinjiang’s Communist Party chief Ma Xingrui welcomed them to Urumqi, the regional capital.

    The goal of the visit, according to a Xinjiang Daily report, was to present a comprehensive understanding of the situation in Xinjiang and convey a narrative of a peaceful and vibrant region to the international community.

    That’s in sharp contrast with the United States and some Western parliaments, which have accused China of carrying out a genocide against the 11-million-strong Uyghurs who live in Xinjiang – a region taken over by Chinese Communists in 1949 – by imprisoning, torturing and sterilizing those who do not fall into line. 

    Beijing has denied the claims and said that alleged concentration camps are in fact vocational training centers that have since been closed.

    To the visiting delegates, Ma touted the region’s development, stability and guarantee of human rights for all ethnic groups, and accused the United States and the West of spreading lies, according to Chinese media reports. 

    “Their objective is to restrict and control China through Xinjiang,” Ma was quoted as saying.

    ‘See it for yourself’

    During their meeting with Ma, the delegation praised China’s creative governance measures and “unprecedented progress in economic development,” the Xinjiang Daily said.

    The delegation head said that “people of all ethnic groups live a good life, enjoy full freedom of religious belief, and have smiles on their faces,” according to the report, which didn’t provide the names of who spoke or any direct quotes.

    1_ENG_UYG_ArabLeaders_04032024.2.JPG
    Women walk past a propaganda slogan promoting ethnic unity in “the new era”, in both Chinese and Uyghur languages, in Yarkant, Xinjiang region, July 18, 2023. (Pedro Pardo/AFP)

    The paper went on to say that the delegation said the United States and other Western nations are “smearing” China’s Xinjiang policy and fabricating rumors.

    “Why not come and see it for yourself?” the delegates said, according to the Xinjiang Daily. “We will tell more people what we saw and heard in Xinjiang, China, so that Arab countries can better understand the real Xinjiang, China.”

    But experts on the region said China orchestrated what the delegates would and wouldn’t see during their visit so as to conceal the persecution of the Uyghurs. 

    The visitors should have been allowed to speak directly and freely with Uyghur Muslims living in the region, said Robert McCaw, director of the Government Affairs Department at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. 

    “Apparently, China wants to reach out to these leftist movements in the Arab world, and China wants to use them as its own propaganda,” said Mustafa Akyol, senior fellow at the Cato’s Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. “The Arab world should not be influenced by China.”

    Political dynamics at play

    China has used such visits to Xinjiang to win over other Muslim groups – and push them away from the United States and other Western powers, experts say. It has also supported the Palestinians, as it seeks to expand its influence in the Middle East.

    Ten 10 months ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Chinese President Xi Jinping during a visit to Beijing that he believed the Xinjiang issue, often framed as a human rights concern, was in fact a battle against terrorism, extremism and separatism. 

    And last August, China invited delegates from the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to visit Xinjiang, in a bid to promote its rosy narrative about the peace and prosperity enjoyed by Uyghurs and blunt international criticism.

    “China seeks to build consensus and strengthen its global influence,” said Ma Ju, an ethnic Muslim Hui scholar based in the United States.

    Meanwhile, Muslim nations may be unwilling to criticize China because they need its political support and investment, experts said.

    Although some Muslim countries have endured a painful history under Western colonialism, they may be willing to overlook that China has effectively colonized the Uyghur homeland, Ma said. 

    “For them, the primary concern seems to be finding a method to counter the influence of the U.S. and the West,” 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 By Uyghar for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Volkswagen reviews Xinjiang operations as abuse pressure mounts | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Carmakers may be using aluminium made by Uyghur forced labour, NGO investigation finds

    Companies such as Toyota, Volkswagen, Tesla, General Motors and BYD could do more to ensure their strict standards are applied in China, Human Rights Watch says

    Car manufacturers Toyota, Volkswagen, Tesla, General Motors and BYD may be using aluminium made by Uyghur forced labour in their supply chains and could do more to minimise that risk, Human Rights Watch says.

    An investigation conducted by HRW has alleged that while most automotive companies have strict human rights standards to audit their global supply chains, they may not be applying the same rigorous sourcing rules for their operations inside China.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘He disappeared for a year’: The survivors of China’s prison camps in Xinjiang – in pictures

    Since 2014, millions of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other minorities have been locked up in China and subjected to torture and forced labour. Some of those freed talk about trying to rebuild their lives in neighbouring Kazakhstan

    • Photography by Robin Tutenges
    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • What do we know about forced labour in Xinjiang?

    Beijing says labour transfers are poverty alleviation tool, but research raises concerns schemes are not voluntary

    Xinjiang, a region of north-west China that is about three times the size of France, is an area that has become associated around the world with detention camps. The facilities are referred to by Beijing as vocational education and training centres. But critics say they are used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other minority ethnic groups with the goal of transforming them into devotees of the Chinese Communist party.

    After unrest in the region and a series of riots and violent attacks by Uyghur separatists between 2014 to 2017, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, launched his Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism, leading to the establishment of the camps. The UN has estimated that since then about 1 million people have been detained in these extrajudicial centres.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Fiji withdraws from UN Xinjiang statement

    Fiji has withdrawn from an international statement that called on China to end its persecution of Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, underlining the superpower’s leverage over Pacific island countries.

    A total of 51 nations had backed the statement that was issued in mid-October at a U.N. committee on human rights violations in the region in China’s northwest. It cited an assessment by the office of the U.N. human rights commissioner that relied extensively on China’s own records and found evidence of large-scale arbitrary detention and other abuses such as torture, forced abortions, family separations and forced labor.

    “Fiji attaches great value to its bilateral relations with the People’s Republic of China and based on its policy of non-interference has withdrawn Fiji’s vote,” the Fijian government said in a statement Monday. 

    Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, elected in December after 16 years of rule by strongman leader Frank Bainimarama and his Fiji First party, is attempting to balance reassertion of longstanding security relationships with countries such as Australia and the United States with his country’s economic ties to China.  

    Rabuka said in June he had put a police cooperation agreement with China under review because he favored relations with democracies. However, Fiji’s decision to elevate the status of Taiwan’s office in the country was reversed the same month under pressure from Beijing, according to Taiwan’s foreign ministry.  

    Fiji’s statement said it was reaffirming its “unwavering commitment” to relations with other countries based on mutual respect for sovereignty and “non-interference” in domestic affairs – echoing Beijing’s foreign policy mantras, particularly in response to criticism of its human rights record. 

    Fiji’s withdrawal from the Xinjiang statement is a “crystal-clear example of how China uses its economic leverage over Pacific countries for political gain,” said Mihai Sora, a Pacific analyst at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank. 

    “One of the strings attached to China’s economic interest in the region is an expectation that Pacific countries support Chinese positions on a range of issues in the U.N., particularly human rights,” he said. 

    The retraction puts Fiji back in line with its past practice of not taking stances that China sees as interference in its domestic affairs, Sora said.

    China has become a substantial source of trade, infrastructure and aid for developing Pacific island countries as part of its global effort to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and gain supporters in international institutions.

    Fiji’s relations with China particularly burgeoned after countries such as Australia and New Zealand sought to punish its government for Bainimarama’s 2006 coup – the Pacific island country’s fourth since the late 1980s.

    Some Pacific island countries also have faced criticism for last week siding with the U.S. in voting against a U.N. General Assembly resolution for a humanitarian truce in Gaza. The territory is being bombed by Israel in the wake of a wave of deadly surprise attacks carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7. 

    Fiji, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Tonga and Papua New Guinea sided with the U.S., Israel and a handful of other countries in opposing the resolution. Several Pacific island countries abstained from the vote. 

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stephen Wright for BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Three ailing inmates die just after release from Xinjiang prison

    Three ailing Uyghur women recently released from the same prison in China’s Xinjiang region have died within days of one another, according to sources with knowledge of the situation, who said inmates at the facility are only given access to medical treatment in extreme cases. 

    Two sisters in their 30s and a 75-year-old grandmother died in early October from different ailments they developed while in detention at the Baykol Women’s Prison in Ghulja, a city located in the upper Ili River valley near Kazakhstan that is also known as Yining in Chinese.

    The three women were jailed on charges of “religious extremism,” prison sources said. Such offenses deemed by Chinese authorities include Uyghurs who pray, possess a Quran or study Islam. 

    The sisters — Melike, 33, and Merziye, nearly 40 — hailed from Ghulja’s Araosteng village, a source with knowledge of the prison and an officer at the village police station told RFA Uyghur, although they were unable to provide details about their deaths. 

    They were each sentenced to 12 years in prison, jail officials said.

    Baykol Women’s Prison was built after authorities in Xinjiang began mass arrests of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in 2017, said the source who knows about the issue and, like others interviewed for this report, spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal.

    The prison houses at least 10,000 inmates from different areas of the far-western region — an exceptionally high number, the source said.

    In a separate interview, a police officer confirmed that there are at least 10,000 inmates in Baykol Women’s Prison and said the health of many detainees has deteriorated as a result of mandatory “educational programs” at the facility, particularly those who are older or have existing health issues. The officer did not elaborate on what the “educational programs” entailed.

    Uyghurs and other Muslims detained by the Chinese government in “re-education” camps in 2017 and 2018 have reported that they were forced to sing political songs, learn Mandarin Chinese, and study speeches of Chinese Communist Party leaders. Some of the nearly 2 million who were held against their will were subjected to torture, rape, forced sterilization and forced labor.

    China has said that the camps were vocational training centers and that they are now closed, though many Uyghurs are still being held in prisons.

    Since the establishment of the Bakyol Women’s Prison about six years ago, and particularly over the last year, there has been a significant decline in the health of the detainees and an increase in deaths in custody, the sources said.

    When contacted by RFA, an official in charge of medical affairs at the prison confirmed that the sisters had died following their release and referred further questions about the cause of their deaths to a superior. 

    The higher-level official said that a elderly woman named Ayshemgul, who was serving a nine-year sentence, died “of high blood pressure and cancer” the same week as the sisters. 

    “She passed away shortly after her release from prison,” the official said.

    The medical affairs official, who has worked at the prison for eight years, said ailing detainees are only referred to medical staff in severe cases.

    About 20-30 detainees require medical attention inside or outside the prison each week, she said.

    “Every day I see three to five ailing inmates,” she told Radio Free Asia. “I receive reports, and they inform me of their pain. … I primarily treat severely ill individuals.”

    Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Joshua Lipes.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • You may be eating fish caught and processed by Uyghur forced labor | Kenneth Roth

    The US government has taken some steps to block Chinese imports made with forced labor. Britain and the EU have done shamefully little

    Last month, Chinese diplomats sent letters – really threats – to discourage attendance at an event on the sidelines of the UN general assembly spotlighting Beijing’s persecution of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. The childish tactic backfired, heightening media interest, but it highlighted the lengths to which Beijing will go to cover up its repression. A recent exposé on the persecution of Uyghurs should reinforce our determination to address these crimes against humanity.

    A four-year investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project pulls back the curtain on the massive use of forced labor in the Chinese government-backed fishing industry. Much of the study focused on people coercively kept on China’s distant-water fishing fleet, which holds workers at sea for months at a time in appalling conditions, often with lethal neglect. But the study also showed that seafood-processing facilities inside China are deploying Uyghur forced labor on a large scale.

    Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Campaigners aim to lower support for China on UN human rights council

    Parliamentarians from 15 countries urge reduction in vote to signal disapproval of country’s crackdown on Uyghur population

    An effort is under way to drive down the Chinese vote at the UN human rights council this week in an attempt to show continuing worldwide disapproval of its human rights record.

    The elections on to the world’s premier human rights body take place by secret ballot on Tuesday with China guaranteed a seat in one of the uncontested seats from its region, but human rights campaigners are working to lower the level of Chinese support to show pressure on the country is not dissipating.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UN experts: Xinjiang expanding forced separation of Uyghur children

    Experts from the United Nations have expressed “grave concern” over allegations that Chinese officials in Xinjiang have expanded a government-run boarding school system that forcibly separates Uyghur and other minority Muslim children from their families and communities.

    The experts were also concerned that the boarding schools teach almost exclusively in China’s official language of Mandarin “with little or no use of Uyghur as medium of instruction,” according to a statement released by the U.N.’s human rights office on Tuesday.

    “The separation of mainly Uyghur and other minority children from their families could lead to their forced assimilation into the majority Mandarin language and the adoption of Han cultural practices,” the U.N. experts said.

    Scholars as well as previous RFA reporting have found that thousands of Uyghur children whose parents have been detained have been sent to camps, boarding schools and orphanages.

    Efforts to assimilate Uyghurs at younger ages gathered steam after the Chinese government undertook a mass detention and internment campaign in 2017 that saw up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities incarcerated in a network of detention camps.

    The U.N. experts said on Tuesday that they were recently informed of an “exponential increase” in recent years in the number of boarding schools for other Muslim and minority children in Xinjiang, the statement said. They’ve also learned that local schools where Uyghur and other minority languages were used for instruction have been closed. 

    The Chinese government’s actions are a violation of minorities’ right to education “without discrimination, family life and cultural rights,” the experts said.

    “The massive scale of the allegations raises extremely serious concerns of violations of basic human rights,” they said.

    ‘Deserves more attention’

    In response to the statement, the Uyghur Human Rights Project called on U.N. member states to vote against China’s upcoming bid for re-election to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

    “Uyghur children are torn from their parents as state policy,” the organization’s executive director, Omer Kanat, said. “It’s past time for U.N. member states to recognize this is a genocide.”

    Also on Tuesday, the United States government said it had determined that “genocide and crimes against humanity continued to occur” in China’s Xinjiang region in 2022. 

    That announcement came as Washington blacklisted three more companies located in Xinjiang because of their use of forced Uyghur labor – a move that bans American companies from importing their goods. 

    Xinjiang region expert Adrian Zenz, who first reported on the boarding schools in 2019, said he was “grateful” for the U.N. experts’ statement. 

    “But I’m also wondering why it took so long – and why did it take the U.N. so long?” he told Radio Free Asia.

    The U.N. should write its own report summarizing existing research on the issue, and the U.N. Human Rights Council could follow up with a resolution condemning China, he said.

    “It just deserves more attention,” he said. “The international community has really paid no attention to this.”

    The U.N. experts are Fernand de Varennes, a special rapporteur on minority issues, Alexandra Xanthaki, a special rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, and Farida Shaheed, a special rapporteur on education.

    Edited by Matt Reed.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Yet another enforced disappearance and yet another secret trial in Xinjiang, China


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Chinese authorities reportedly sentence Uyghur professor to life in prison

    Human rights group says Rahile Dawut lost appeal after being convicted in 2018 on charges of promoting ‘splittism’

    A leading Uyghur professor who disappeared six years ago is reported to have sentenced to life in prison by Chinese authorities for “endangering state security”.

    Rahile Dawut, 57, who specialises in the study of Uyghur folklore and traditions and is considered an expert in her field, lost an appeal over her sentence after being convicted in 2018 on charges of promoting “splittism”, according to the US-based Dui Hua Foundation human rights group.

    Continue reading…

  • UK solar could be ‘dumping ground’ for products of Chinese forced labour, ministers warned

    Energy bill amendment requires large solar energy projects to prove supply chain free of slave labour

    The UK risks becoming a dumping ground for the products of forced labour from Xinjiang province in China if it rejects reforms by members of the foreign affairs select committee with cross-party support, ministers have been warned.

    An amendment to the energy bill, due to be debated on Tuesday, would require solar energy companies to prove their supply chains are free of slave labour.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Travel firms urged to halt trips to Uyghur region over China rights abuses

    Exclusive: Report says optics of western firms organising Xinjiang tours amid ‘crimes against humanity are disastrous’

    Uyghur advocates have called on western tourism companies to stop selling package holidays that take visitors through Xinjiang, where human rights abuses by authorities have been called a genocide by some governments.

    The request comes as China reopens to foreign visitors after the pandemic, and as its leader, Xi Jinping, calls for more tourism to the region.

    Continue reading…

  • China pumps up narrative of happy Uyghurs in Xinjiang among Pakistanis

    “Chinese Rahat Abdullah” has become a regular on Pakistani social media channels, YouTube and Facebook, wearing Atlas silk dresses, Pakistani clothing, or traditional Chinese outfits.

    Regarded as a Chinese internet star, she also sings in Urdu on local radio and cooks Uyghur dishes on Pakistani TV programs – though she refers to the dishes as Chinese food. 

    Her sudden rise in popularity has raised questions among Uyghurs living in Pakistan about Beijing’s efforts to use local Uyghurs as pro-Chinese Communist Party propaganda tools to downplay the Chinese government’s horrific treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

    China has come under harsh international criticism for its severe rights abuses against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, including forced labor. The U.S. government and several Western parliaments have declared that the abuses amount to genocide or crimes against humanity.

    Abdullah is believed to hail from the city of Ghulja – or Yining in Chinese – in Xinjiang. Information on Pakistani social media platforms says she earned a law degree in China and arrived in Pakistan in 2010. 

    She has been known to teach Chinese at various universities in Pakistan and is portrayed in the videos as a messenger of friendship between China and the predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

    But Abdullah doesn’t mix with local Uyghurs, according to Omar Uyghur, the founder of a trust that provides assistance to Uyghur refugees in Pakistan.

    “She doesn’t come to the weddings or funerals,” he said. “Uyghurs don’t meet with her either. She spreads propaganda in the Pakistani media on how Uyghurs are living happily.”

    At a time when Uyghurs in Pakistan cannot freely return to Xinjiang and some Uyghur women married to Pakistanis are being detained by Chinese authorities in the region, Abdullah was able to visit Ghulja last June. 

    During her visit, she participated in a wedding and recorded Uyghur songs and dances there, later posting them on Facebook and other social media platforms to give her Pakistani followers the impression that Uyghurs live happy lives.

    In June 2023, Rahat Abdullah visited Ghulja in northwestern China's Xinjiang region, where she recorded Uyghur songs and dances to give her Pakistani followers the impression that Uyghurs live happy lives. Credit: Screenshot from Rahat Abdullah Facebook
    In June 2023, Rahat Abdullah visited Ghulja in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, where she recorded Uyghur songs and dances to give her Pakistani followers the impression that Uyghurs live happy lives. Credit: Screenshot from Rahat Abdullah Facebook

    Television host and actress

    Until recently, Abdullah had about 10 social media followers, but her follower count has climbed to more than 40,000, largely due to her appearances on Pakistani TV. 

    She recently became a host of the “Ni Hao” program – Mandarin for “Hello” – on Pakistan’s Kay2 TV, a channel that has received investment from China. She also has portrayed a Pakistani woman married to a Chinese man in a TV series that highlights the friendship between China and Pakistan.

    On June 4, Abdullah sang a Pakistani folk song on an Eid al-Adha TV program in Islamabad while wearing a traditional Uyghur Atlas dress and introducing herself as “Chinese Rahat Abdullah.”

    Photos on her social media accounts indicate that she has had connections with the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan and other Chinese organizations there since 2017. 

    Abdullah, who is relatively unfamiliar to Uyghurs but is gaining popularity through local broadcasts in Pakistan, did not respond to Radio Free Asia’s requests for comment via messages sent to her social media accounts. 

    Other efforts with Pakistanis

    Abdullah’s new notoriety comes as China and Pakistan have strengthened ties across various sectors in recent years, and as Beijing has invited some influential Pakistanis on trips to Xinjiang.

    On July 18, Ma Xingrui, Communist Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and Xinjiang government chairman Erkin Tuniyaz welcomed a delegation of Pakistani scholars in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. 

    During the meeting, Ma told his guests that they have created a free and happy living environment for the people of Xinjiang. He also criticized Western countries that have followed the lead of the United States in condemning China for human rights violations. 

    Alleged atrocities against the Uyghurs have included detention in “re-education” camps and prisons, torture, sexual assaults and forced labor.

    Qibla Ayaz, chairman of Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology and leader of the visiting delegation, affirmed the participants’ unwavering support for China and expressed admiration for the progress in Xinjiang’s development and the peaceful lives of its Muslim population.

    The participants also expressed hopes for creating closer connections with Xinjiang through the Pakistan-China Economic Corridor, a 3,000-kilometer Chinese infrastructure network project under the Belt and Road Initiative to secure and reduce travel time for China’s Middle East energy imports.

    Pakistani student Muhammad Usman Asad holds the flag of East Turkestan, Uyghurs' preferred name for Xinjiang, in front of a billboard announcing a Dragon Boat Festival event at the National University of Sciences & Technology in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 10, 2022. Credit: Mumahhad Usman Asad
    Pakistani student Muhammad Usman Asad holds the flag of East Turkestan, Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang, in front of a billboard announcing a Dragon Boat Festival event at the National University of Sciences & Technology in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 10, 2022. Credit: Mumahhad Usman Asad

    An ineffective measure

    Some Pakistanis have expressed growing concern that their government has remained silent about the abuses in Xinjiang.

    Pakistani scholar Muhammad Usman Asad, who has spoken out on behalf of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, said when China invites Pakistani religious scholars to tour Xinjiang, news about their visits always appears on Chinese social media, but not in the Pakistani media. 

    “These so-called religious scholars are not the kind of scholars that the Muslim masses in Pakistan would listen to,” said Asad, who staged a solitary sit-in in Islamabad in June 2022 to protest China’s repressive policies against Uyghurs. “They are only pro-government and government-sponsored Islamist organizations, so their false propaganda about China will have little effect.”

    Nonetheless, China is extending its attempts to sanitize its image, Asad said, following heavy criticism from Western nations about the government’s brutal treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang.   

    “Just as China’s campaign to improve its image through the religious sphere has been ineffective, its campaign in Pakistan through English-speaking Chinese or Pakistani internet stars has been equally ineffective,” he said.

    Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matthew Reed.

    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur.

  • Elderly Uyghur jailed for learning the Quran as a child confirmed dead in Xinjiang

    An elderly Uyghur serving a nearly 14-year prison sentence in Xinjiang following his arrest in 2017 for studying religion as a child and for committing other religious “offenses” died of hypertension while in jail, a local police officer said.

    Abdurusul Memet, 71, from a village in Kashgar county was sentenced for learning the Quran from his father when he was 12 years old, praying and having a beard, he said. 

    Memet’s situation came to light after the Xinjiang Victims Database tweeted last week that Memet had been sentenced to 13 years and 11 months in jail for learning the Quran between November 1964 and March 1965. The database is a platform that collects records of Uyghurs and other Turkic minority peoples detained in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region.

    Following his arrest, authorities jailed Memet in a prison in the regional capital Urumqi to serve his sentence, according to the tweet, which reached an audience of 67,000 people within one week.

    When Radio Free Asia began making inquiries by phone about Memet’s current situation, a police officer in Kashgar county said Memet died in mid-July while serving his sentence in a prison in Urumqi. 

    “Yes, there is a person named Abdurusul Memet who was arrested for learning the Quran when he was 12,” said the officer. “He passed away in prison.”

    The officer went on to say that Memet was arrested in 2017 for “illegal religious activities” and has been serving his sentence in Urumqi. 

    “The reason for arrest was that he usually prayed namaz, had a beard, and learned the Quran when he was 12 years old,” he said, referring to the prayers performed by Muslims.

    The police officer also said Memet died of hypertension, though he previously had been in good health, and that authorities had returned Memet’s body to his family. 

    Memet’s name and police information also appear in the Kashgar police archives, part of the “Xinjiang Police Files,” confidential documents hacked from Xinjiang police computers that contain the personal records of 830,000 individuals. 

    The files were obtained by a third party and published in May 2022. They provide inside information on Beijing’s internment of up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region in 2017 and 2018, the height of one of China’s “strike hard” campaigns. 

    The records are further evidence of Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which the Chinese government has repeatedly denied.

    The Kashgar police subset of records does not include a photo of Memet, as do some of the other files of detained Uyghurs, but they indicate that he had no previous criminal record prior to his 2017 arrest.

    Omir Bekali, a Uyghur of Kazakh descent who spent nine months in three “re-education” camps in Xinjiang on allegations of terrorist activities and now resides in the Netherlands, said Chinese authorities have routinely accused Uyghurs like Memet of made-up crimes and coerced them into admitting that they committed them. 

    “The fact that Mr. Abdurusul was arrested for studying the Quran at the age of 12 illustrates how the fascist Chinese government is willing to engage in any unlawful actions and employ any means to eradicate the Uyghurs and Kazakhs of East Turkistan,” he said, using the Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang. 

    “China is detaining them on fabricated charges and killing them. This is an evident and alarming issue,” he said.

    Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China, Myanmar and now Darfur … the horror of genocide is here again | Simon Tisdall

    Each time it happens, the world insists: ‘never again’. But the political and moral blindspots that allow these atrocities will persist until the lessons of history are learned

    It’s happening again. In Darfur, scene of a genocide that killed 300,000 people and displaced millions 20 years ago, armed militias are on the rampage once more. Now, as then, they are targeting ethnic African tribes, murdering, raping and stealing with impunity. “They” are nomadic, ethnic Arab raiders, the much-feared “devils on horseback” – except now they ride in trucks. They’re called the Janjaweed. And they’re back.

    How is it possible such horrors can be repeated? The world condemned the 2003 slaughter. The UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigated. Sudan’s former president, Omar al-Bashir, was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity along with his principal allies. The trial of one suspect, known as Ali Kushayb, opened last year. Yet Bashir and the guilty men have evaded justice so far.

    Continue reading…

  • Uyghur hatmaker and wife confirmed to have died in prison in Xinjiang

    A Uyghur hatmaker and his wife detained in 2017 amid mass arrests in Xinjiang of members of the mostly Muslim minority group by Chinese authorities have been confirmed as having died in prison while serving their sentences, people with knowledge of the couple’s situation said.

    Haji’ahun and his spouse Mehpiremhan, residents of Maralbeshi county in Kashgar prefecture, were each sentenced to 10 years in Tumshuq Prison in 2019 for “illegal” religious activities, according to the sources. 

    The prison housed others arbitrarily arrested during the 2017 crackdown on prominent and ordinary Uyghurs alike, jailing them in “re-education” camps and prisons for alleged extremist behavior, such as previous trips or contacts abroad or religious activities. 

    China has come under harsh international criticism for its severe rights abuses of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, including forced labor.

    The U.S. government and several Western parliaments, including the German Bundestag, have declared that the abuses amount to genocide or crimes against humanity.

    Tumshuq Prison authorities released the bodies of several jailed Uyghurs who had died to their families in secret one week before the Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, in late April, according to an émigré from Maralbeshi in a previous RFA report.

    Based on that information, RFA confirmed that the body of Uyghur motorcycle repairman Memettursun Metniyaz was among those returned to relatives. The Maralbeshi county resident had been jailed in early 2017 for completing the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, years before. 

    Maralbeshi police contacted by RFA also confirmed the return of corpses of dead prisoners to their families a week before the Eid holiday, but they said they did not know the exact number or the causes of death.

    An employee at a police station in Maralbeshi country, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the number of inmates who have died in Tumshuq Prison has been exceptionally high, and that the hatmaker was among those who passed away before Eid.

    The staffer also said that a rumor had been circulating that inmates who died before the holiday had eaten contaminated food in prison, though RFA could not determine the accuracy of the information.

    Another employee at a police station in Maralbeshi confirmed that Haji’ahun, who was in his 70s, and his wife, who was in her 60s, died together in prison where they had been serving time since their sentencing in 2019. 

    “They were an old couple. Both passed away,” she said.   

    Translated by the Uyghur Service. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Paul Eckert.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Human rights and wrongs: the Australian calling out oppression at home and around the world

    Undeterred by the scale of challenges in her in-tray, the new head of Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan, says ‘We need to be standing with those people’

    Tirana Hassan may be responsible for calling out abuses around the world, but the new global head of Human Rights Watch remains shocked by her home country of Australia’s “dehumanising” treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

    Hassan visited the notorious Woomera immigration detention facility in central Australia when she was in the final year of a law degree and found “hundreds and hundreds of Iraqis, Iranians and Afghans who had just been wallowing without access to legal representation”.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘Like a war zone’: Congress hears of China’s abuses in Xinjiang ‘re-education camps’

    Two women tell of witnessing or experiencing torture and brainwashing, as Republicans and Democrats vow to document ‘genocide’

    Two women who say they experienced and escaped Chinese “re-education camps” have provided first-hand testimony to members of the US Congress, giving harrowing detail while imploring Americans not to look away from what the US has declared a continuing genocide of Muslim ethnic minorities.

    Testifying before a special House committee at the beginning of Ramadan, Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur woman, said that during her nearly three years in internment camps and police stations, prisoners were subjected to 11 hours of “brainwashing education” each day. It included singing patriotic songs and praising the Chinese government before and after meals.

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  • Governor of China’s Xinjiang region cancels UK visit after backlash

    Foreign Office says officials would have been prepared to meet with Erkin Tuniyaz to raise human rights concerns

    The governor of China’s western region of Xinjiang will not be visiting Britain this week, according to the UK Foreign Office, after a backlash from MPs over alleged human rights abuses in the region.

    British officials had said if Erkin Tuniyaz visited this week, they would have been prepared to meet with him to raise concern over the human rights situation in Xinjiang. But those plans faced backlash from politicians who highlighted human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims in the region.

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  • US Corporations Are Complicit in the Repression of Uyghurs

    At the end of last year, China was rocked by a wave of protest against the government’s stringent “zero-COVID” policy. The uprising was triggered in part by a horrific fire in an apartment block in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang, that killed and injured many Uyghurs trapped under lockdown in their apartments. The protests, combined with the failure of zero-COVID to stop the spread of the omicron…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.