We Uyghurs Have No Say by Ilham Tohti review – a people ignored

March 9, 2022

Only a few years ago the Uyghur minority in China was unknown to most people in the west. China’s record on human rights, however, was an open secret, albeit covered in a miasma of hypocrisy by foreign governments intent on expanding their trading opportunities. In the last few years the sites in Xinjiang province where the Uyghur Muslim people are detained have turned into something akin to concentration camps, with between 1 million and 3 million prisoners; the evidence points to a planned programme to erase an entire ethnic identity.

Recent years have seen more and more evidence of atrocities against the Uyghurs. As well as mass internment, there are accounts of forced labour, torture, death, disappearances, and the removal of children from their parents to orphanages in order to “de-racinate” them. Satellite and drone evidence has shown that mosques and Muslim burial grounds have been demolished. There are reliable reports of rapes, and of camp doctors sterilising Uyghur women. In 2020 the Jamestown Foundation released a report analysing Chinese government documents, including family planning records, which showed that between 2015 and 2018 forced sterilisations and abortions decreased the birthrate in two of the largest Uyghur prefectures by 84%.

Read the full article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/09/we-uyghurs-have-no-say-ilham-tohti-review-background-genocide-china