16 Years After July 5 Unrest, UHRP Demands Information on Disappeared Uyghurs
July 3, 2025 | 1:00 p.m. EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact: Omer Kanat +1 (202) 790-1795, Peter Irwin +1 (646) 906-7722
The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) marks the 16th anniversary of the July 5, 2009, violent suppression of Uyghur protests in Ürümchi, and urges governments to demand information about the disappeared individuals who are still missing.
“The killing and enforced disappearance of innocent Uyghur protesters sixteen years ago paved the way for the genocide in East Turkistan today,” said UHRP Executive Director Omer Kanat. “The international community has a responsibility to pressure the Chinese government to end the arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of Uyghurs, and to free all who are currently detained.”
The July 5 unrest began with a peaceful protest against the killing of Uyghur factory workers in Guangdong. Security forces fired on the protestors, prompting an eruption of violence in the city, which led to a still-unknown number of deaths. In the wake of the unrest, Chinese authorities cracked down with security sweeps of Uyghur neighborhoods, resulting in enforced disappearances of Uyghurs. Families still do not know the fate of loved ones who were detained 16 years earlier.
The unrest in Ürümchi marked a tragic turning point in the oppression of Uyghurs. The Chinese government used the unrest to justify widespread surveillance and harsh forced assimilation policies. By restricting civil liberties and cultural expression, these policies helped to lay the groundwork for later atrocity crimes. Today, Uyghurs face mass internment, forced labor, torture, sexual violence, cultural erasure, and forced sterilizations.
The practice of enforced disappearances has only increased in the Uyghur Region since the Ürümchi unrest. A 2021 UHRP report, The Disappearance of Uyghur Intellectual and Cultural Elites, documents the internment and enforced disappearance of 312 influential intellectual and cultural leaders. Among those who disappeared was Rahile Dawut, a renowned ethnographer and professor specializing in Uyghur folklore, who was secretly detained by Chinese authorities and later sentenced to life in prison.
UHRP calls on governments to demand accountability for the Uyghurs who remain missing since the Ürümchi unrest, including Abdurehim Sidiq, Amantay Jumetay, Eysajan Memet, Nabi Eli, and many others.
Governments must pressure China for information about these cases, and about all Uyghurs who have been arbitrarily detained, imprisoned, and forcibly disappeared.
Read more:
7·5事件十六周年：被抹黑的抗争与未竟的真相, July 2025
To Strike the Strongest Blow: Questions Remain Over Crackdown on 2009 Unrest in Ürümchi, July 2013
Can Anyone Hear Us? Voices From the 2009 Unrest in Ürümchi, July 2010
A City Ruled by Fear and Silence: Ürümchi, Two Years On, July 2011
Patigul Ghulam – “I Don’t Have a Gun, I Have Only My Mouth and My Tears, and You Cannot Control Them”, March 2016