Chinese authorities are reportedly stepping up their campaign against Muslims in the north-western region of Xinjiang.
Both Hui and Uighur Muslims have experienced intensified restrictions and Islamophobia since Xi Jinping became leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012, with controls deepening and expanding in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region especially.
Dolkun Isa was on his way to speak at Italy’s Senate late last month when he was stopped by the police and detained for a number of hours.
Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese Nobel Peace laureate who died on July 13, has had some critics among exiled radical Chinese dissidents. But the Taiwan Center in New York was overflowing with his “comrades” and admirers at a memorial held for him on July 15.
Fearful Uyghurs scramble to get out of Egypt and avoid forced return to China, where they risk torture and arbitrary jailing.
EU and its 28 Members Lack Strategy, Credibility to Bring Change
International Uyghur Language Day, launched in 2015, urges Uyghurs around the world to speak their native language.
Beijing created a pressure cooker in Xinjiang
On 26 April 2017, Uyghur human rights activist and member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) Dolkun Isa, who was participating in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), was forced to leave the UN premises.
Mounting Islamophobia in the West has emboldened Beijing’s repression of Uyghur human rights.
Bibliography of select news reports & academic works
Compiled by Professor Magnus Fiskesjö
Persecution of teachers, scholars and artists constitutes an attempt to erase Uyghur culture. 338 Uyghur intellectuals interned, imprisoned or forcibly disappeared since April 2017, including 21 staff mebers of Xinjiang University. International scholarly exchange with China cannot be justified until they are released.
The Chinese government has been demolishing Uyghur neighborhoods across East Turkestan, for more than a decade. This has resulted in the loss of physical structures, including Uyghur homes, shops, and religious sites. Uyghurs have been forcibly relocated to heavily monitored apartment blocks.
Religious expression is one of the primary reasons the government is sending people to the expanding network of internment camps across East Turkestan (aka Xinjiang). There are reports of people being sent to the camps for having attended a wedding or funeral where a religious passage was read.
The massive scale and sudden establishment of the concentration camp system in East Turkestan is unprecedented. According to US government estimates, there are a minimum of 800,000 and possibly over 2 million people currently detained. This is up to 20 percent of the Uyghur population.
Chinese government officials have emphasized Mandarin language ability as a marker of modernity and, more recently, a necessity in the fight against “terrorism.”
The Chinese Communist Party poses a fundamental threat to civilized values and a rules-based international order. The Party’s massive crackdown in 2018 is breathtaking, encompassing independent intellectuals, civil society, and religious believers of all kinds, including Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetan Buddhists, Chinese Buddhists, and Hui and Turkic Muslims across the length and breadth of China.