‘Becoming Family’ Campaign Intensifies Repression in Xinjiang Chinese officials, since early 2018, have imposed regular “home stays” on families in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang. These visits are part of the government’s increasingly invasive “Strike Hard” campaign in the region, home to 11 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities. Chinese officials, since early…
Officials in China’s northwestern Xinjiang recently fired all ethnic minority teachers as part of a racial-profiling crackdown in the region. As local government departments continue an initiative to shut down schools dedicated to educating Uyghur, Kazakh, and Mongolian children or merge them with schools for China’s Han majority, authorities forced all minority teachers older than…
It’s not hard to spot the ethno-racial profiling Chinese authorities use to clamp down on Uighur resistance. In recent years, Chinese authorities have established numerous checkpoints in cities and towns across Xinjiang, the vast province that abuts post-Soviet Central Asia. In some areas, one is unable to walk more than a couple of hundred meters…
Authorities in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region have jailed the four wealthiest ethnic Uyghurs in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) city for acts of “religious extremism,” according to an official, amid a crackdown he said is unlikely to end any time soon. A source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that Abdujelil…
Far from the booming metropolis of Beijing, China is building a sprawling system that combines dystopian technology and human policing. “It’s a kind of frontline laboratory for surveillance. KASHGAR, China — This is a city where growing a beard can get you reported to the police. So can inviting too many people to your wedding, or naming your…
China is well on the way to one of its biggest crackdowns in the restive and remote northwestern region of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) since ethnic riots racked the capital of Urumqi in 2009. Numbers released in state-media reports and in court press releases from the region show that since May more than 800 people, most…
It’s not really “China’s Chechnya” yet, but the insurgency in Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is growing fast. Incidents of anti-Chinese violence are getting bigger and much more frequent. Since March, 176 people have been killed in six separate attacks on Chinese police and government officials, local collaborators and ordinary Chinese residents of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) Uighur…
A lawyer representing Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, detained on charges of separatism, says the evidence he has been allowed to review by the prosecution so far is incomplete, while Chinese authorities in the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) have yet to clarify whether he will be tried in secret. Tohti’s lawyer Li Fangping…
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is failing to deliver on its promises to quell violence in Xinjiang (East Turkistan). On July 28, bloody clashes between Uyghur protestors and para-military personnel in Yäkän (Ch. Shache) left at least 96 dead; leaders of Uyghur exile communities put the death toll at 2,000. Three days later, Jümä Tahir, the government-appointed…
The city of Karamay in China’s turbulent Xinjiang (East Turkistan) region is currently hosting the 13th Xinjiang (East Turkistan) Sports Games. To keep the competition safe from terrorism, the city government announced an unusual safety measure: A ban on “abnormal” Muslim-associated clothing and hairstyles on public transport. Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is home to the Uighur people, a…
