An elderly Uyghur woman has died from health complications after being incarcerated at a political “re-education camp” in Ili Kazakh (in Chinese, Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to sources. Since April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or…
Hong Kong [China], May 22 (ANI): There has been a sharp uptick in government-backed persecution of Christianity and other religions in China, but none are currently suffering as much as the Muslim population in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Some 11 million Uighurs reside in this northwest Chinese province. Of course, using the word “autonomous” to describe Xinjiang is…
BEIJING (AFP) – All Chinese mosques should raise the national flag to “promote a spirit of patriotism” among Muslims, the country’s top Islamic regulatory body has declared, as the Communist Party seeks to tighten its grip on religion. Flags should be hung in a “prominent position” in all mosque courtyards, the China Islamic Association said…
After exiled Uyghur communities around the world marched in various capitals, including Brussels, Washington, DC and Ottawa, for the freedom of their countrymen, the unprecedented mass detention of Uyghurs by Chinese authorities has finally seemed to catch some attention from the West. On April 18, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Laura Stone said, according to AP’s summary,…
‘The psychological pressure is enormous when you have to criticise yourself, denounce your thinking,’ says detainee Muslims were detained for re-education by China‘s government and made to eat pork and drink alcohol, according to a former internment camp inmate. Omir Bekali, one among perhaps a million people reportedly arrested and held in mass re-education camps, said he…
The Chinese government has rejected a diplomatic demand from a group of Western countries, including Canada, to discuss issues related to the Xinjiang region and conditions for the largely-Muslim Uyghur population there. A new academic report, meanwhile, suggests the number of people detained in Xinjiang facilities used for political re-education appears to be in the…
ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) — Hour upon hour, day upon day, Omir Bekali and other detainees in far western China’s new indoctrination camps had to disavow their Islamic beliefs, criticize themselves and their loved ones and give thanks to the ruling Communist Party. When Bekali, a Kazakh Muslim, refused to follow orders each day, he was…
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressmen Randy Hultgren (R-IL) and James P. McGovern (D-MA), Co-Chairs of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, addressed the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights on the human rights situation in China’s Xinjiang province. The Co-Chairs’ remarks were broadcast via video at the start of the subcommittee’s “Exchange of Views on the Human Rights Situation…
BEIJING — Kayrat Samarkand says his only “crime” was being a Muslim who had visited neighboring Kazakhstan. On that basis alone, he was detained by police, aggressively interrogated for three days, then dispatched in November to a “reeducation camp” in China’s western province of Xinjiang for three months. There, he faced endless brainwashing and humiliation, he…
Mr. Thum, a historian, has been conducting research in Xinjiang, China, for nearly two decades. What does it take to intern half a million members of one ethnic group in just a year? Enormous resources and elaborate organization, but the Chinese authorities aren’t stingy. Vast swathes of the Uighur population in China’s western region of…
