High school sweethearts – both originally from China’s Xinjiang Uighur region – dreamed of living together in Australia The last time Almas Nizamidin saw his wife was on Valentine’s Day last year, when he flew from Australia to China to surprise her. Now she’s in prison. A month after his visit to China, his newly pregnant wife,…
DetailsAuthorities 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…
DetailsFar 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…
DetailsOne member of the Uyghur diaspora explains why Uyghurs abroad raise their banners outside Chinese embassies. A question I am often asked is why I participate in protests and demonstrations. What impact do our blue and white placards and hoarse voices have against a stoic Canberran building that hoists the Chinese flag? Perhaps my questioners see…
DetailsTO THE BRINK In the early hours of New Year’s Day in 2017, a heavily armed gunmanstormed Reina, an exclusive Istanbul nightclub on the Bosphorus coast, murdering 39. ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre, but the Turkish deputy prime minister swiftly made an incendiary claim: the perpetrators, he said, were “probably” Uyghur—the ethnically Turkic Muslims indigenous to the region…
DetailsBEIJING: A court in China’s mainly Muslim East Turkistan (Xinjiang) region has sentenced a man to six years in prison for “provoking trouble” and growing a beard, a practise discouraged by local authorities, a newspaper reported on Sunday. The court in the desert oasis city of Kashgar sentenced the 38-year-old Uyghur to six years, while…
DetailsThe article, about a Muslim couple in the western Chinese region of East Turkistan (Xinjiang) being sentenced to prison for growing a long beard and wearing a burqa, appeared in state news media on Sunday. By Monday morning, it had vanished. Such occurrences are commonplace in China, where censors frequently purge without explanation online information…
DetailsDuring 2014, the ruling Chinese Communist Party intensified its targeting of ethnic minority groups with an “anti-terror” campaign in the troubled northwestern region of East Turkistan (Xinjiang), and ratcheted up controls on freedom of expression, Amnesty International said in its annual global human rights report. Ethnic minorities including Tibetans, mostly Muslim Uyghurs, and Mongolians faced…
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