Uyghur rights group calls on hotel chains not to ‘sanitise’ China abuses in Xinjiang

April 17, 2025 | The Guardian

Almost 200 international hotels are operating or planning to open in Xinjiang, despite calls from human rights groups for global corporations not to help “sanitise” the Chinese government’s human rights abuses in the region, a report has said.

The report by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) identified 115 operational hotels which the organisation said “benefit from a presence in the Uyghur region”. At least another 74 were in various stages of construction or planning, the report said. The UHRP said some of the hotels also had exposure or links of concern to forced labour and labour transfer programmes.

Peter Irwin, associate director for research and advocacy at UHRP, said: “This kind of hotel expansion, from international chains in particular, falls squarely within the Chinese government’s own strategy to try and normalise the public’s understanding of what’s going on in the Uyghur region.

“The government can point to these major companies entrenching themselves in the region as evidence that everything is normal, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.”

“These hotels continue to operate and expand business in a region in which Uyghur families have been torn apart by internment, imprisonment, forced labor programs, and enforced disappearances,” said Dr Henryk Szadziewski, co-author of the report and director of research at the UHRP.

“They should publicly disclose their decision to exit, conduct heightened human rights due diligence, and engage with Uyghur rights organizations for remediation,” the report said.

Read the full article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/17/uyghur-rights-group-calls-on-hotel-chains-not-to-sanitise-china-abuses-in-xinjiang