Hotel chains should not ‘sanitise’ China abuses in Xinjiang, Uyghur rights group says in new report
April 18, 2025 | The Independent
Nearly 200 international hotels, including prominent chains, are either already operating in Xinjiang or planning to open in the region, despite reports of widespread human rights abuses by China, according to a new report.
The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) has identified at least 115 operational hotels that “benefit from a presence in the Uyghur region”, including major international hotel chains — Accor, Hilton, IHG, Marriott, and Wyndham. Additionally, at least 74 other hotels are in various stages of construction or planning in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang).
These hotels are “operating and dramatically expanding their presence in East Turkistan despite ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide”, the UHRP said in a report published on Thursday.
The report also mentions that some of the hotels have connections to forced labour and labour transfer programmes.
“By offering high-end accommodations and leisure spaces, international hotel chains contribute to a sanitised image of the region, one that directly serves Beijing’s propaganda objectives,” it said.
“It’s unconscionable that these hotel chains continue to operate and expand in the Uyghur Region at a time when the Chinese government is carrying out systematic atrocities,” said Peter Irwin, co-author of the report and the associate director for research and advocacy at the UHRP.
“There is absolutely no way these multibillion-dollar corporations can operate responsibly in this environment – their presence alone normalises and legitimises these abuses,” he said.
According to the UHRP report, hotel chains operating in the Uyghur region “risk enabling and legitimising the political and economic system that perpetuates forced labour, cultural erasure and other human rights abuses targeting Uyghurs”.
The leading hotels “support the very apparatus of state control that enforces these atrocities” by maintaining a presence in the region, it said.
Seeking action, the UHRP has called on the international hotel chains to freeze their further expansion in the region, halt all operations and sever any business ties, and third-party booking platforms to delist all hotel booking services in the region.
Read the full article: https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/uyghur-china-xinjiang-hotels-abuses-b2735644.html