The Uyghur Reader: Stories We’re Following (Issue 12)

Uyghur Reader 12

Issue 12: October 30 – November 12, 2025

Welcome to the twelfth issue of the Uyghur Reader, a biweekly content roundup curated by the staff of the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

Each issue features carefully selected articles, reports, and publications from media outlets, academic institutions, NGOs, and government sources. While we highlight urgent human rights issues, we also aim to reflect the breadth of the Uyghur experience, including politics, economics, history, and culture.

🧠 This week’s selections come from Associate Director for Research and Advocacy Peter Irwin, Director of Research Henryk Szadziewski, and Chinese Outreach Coordinator Zubayra Shamseden. 

📌 Amy Hawkins for The Guardian reports that Sheffield Hallam University halted Professor Laura Murphy’s research on Uyghur forced labor after pressure linked to Chinese authorities, including a visit from state security in Beijing and a defamation suit by a Chinese company. Murphy, whose work has informed global forced-labor policy, was ordered to stop her research and her lab’s webpage was removed. After Murphy threatened legal action, the university reversed the decision and apologized, but the eight-month pause raises serious concerns about academic freedom in the UK and the influence of Beijing on research into Uyghur human rights abuses. “UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China,” November 3.

📌 Using internal documents, the BBC‘s Damian Grammaticas describes how Sheffield Hallam University came under scrutiny after it suspended investigations, led by Professor Laura Murphy, into the forced labor of Uyghurs. The university made the decision following Chinese political and diplomatic pressure. Observers note that this reflects a growing trend of Chinese government influence reaching into Western institutions, discouraging research on sensitive human rights topics. “China intimidated UK university to ditch human rights research, documents show,” November 2.

More coverage on the suspension of Professor Laura Murphy’s research below:

📌 In Der Spiegel, Jürgen Dahlkamp, Christoph Giesen, and Hubert Gude report that Uyghur woman Reziwanguli Baikeli, who fled China’s mass internment campaign in East Turkistan, was mistakenly deported from Germany to China instead of Turkey. After her daughter’s desperate public appeal, Baikeli managed to flee China once again and reach safety in Turkey, November 9.

📌 Dina Temple-Raston of The World from PRX speaks to Rebekah Brown, a Senior Researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, about China’s digital surveillance of Uyghurs overseas. They discuss how once-visible state surveillance of Uyghurs has moved into the shadows of cloud infrastructure and routine software updates. Tools meant to preserve identity have become instruments to erase it, as seen in the case of UyghurEdit++. “China’s surveillance of Uyghurs expands to the digital world,” November 4.

📌 Christopher Williams for The Telegraph reports that Uyghur campaigners are warning the UK government about RedBird Capital Partners’ bid to take over The Telegraph, citing chairman John Thornton’s “deeply troubling record of alignment” with the Chinese Communist Party, including a 2021 visit to the Uyghur Region while survivors testified about mass internment and forced sterilization. Stop Uyghur Genocide make the case that investors with ties to Beijing risk undermining a major platform that has consistently reported on Uyghur abuses. “Genocide campaigners raise alarm over Telegraph bidder’s Chinese links,” November 3.

📌 Kelly Ng reports for BBC News on the Uyghur Region’s rapid tourism growth, and how rights groups warn that these campaigns mask ongoing abuses, including mass detention, surveillance, forced assimilation, and cultural erasure of Uyghurs. Domestic and foreign tourists largely see a curated, sanitized version of the Uyghur homeland, with limited access to local communities and religious sites, raising questions about the ethics of tourism in the region. “300 million tourists just visited China’s stunning Xinjiang region. There’s a side they didn’t see,” November 1.

📌 On October 31, Sophie Richardson, Senior China Adviser for Climate Rights International and co-Executive Director at the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, warned that China’s solar industry relies on forced labor in the Uyghur Region, where Uyghurs face mass detention, political indoctrination, and coercion in industries including polysilicon production. She called on governments, companies, and consumers to demand fully traceable supply chains, bar imports made with forced labor, and ensure renewable energy growth does not come at the cost of human rights. “Renewable Energy Still Comes at the Cost of Forced Labor. It Needs to Be Stopped,” ChinaFile.

Uyghur Reader in Chinese/中文:

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