The Uyghur Reader: Stories We’re Following (Issue 11)

Uyghur Reader 11

Issue 11: October 16 – October 29, 2025

Welcome to the eleventh 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, Program Assistant Adaire Criner, and Director of Research Henryk Szadziewski. 

📌 On October 29, Radio Free Asia (RFA) Executive Editor Rosa Hwang announced a complete pause on RFA operations due to US federal funding cuts. The article included this powerful quote about the importance of the Uyghur Service, “When RFA Uyghur journalists first exposed the violent repression and mass detainment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China harassed and arrested their family members. Still, our journalists bravely continued the work of uncovering atrocities. With the world’s only independent Uyghur-language news service shuttered, China’s propaganda will fester without a potent and effective accountability check.” Read coverage on the pause by The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as RFA’s statement.

📌 Uyghur scholar and activist, Abduweli Ayup talks to Dina Temple-Raston of The World PRX about his experiences with language in the Uyghur homeland from schoolchild to running a kindergarten. His efforts to teach children in their own language led to a mother tongue movement among Uyghurs, as well as his arrest and imprisonment. Abduweli explains that despite pressure placed on him in exile by Chinese authorities, he is determined to continue his work on linguistic rights. “Uyghurs weren’t always oppressed in China,” October 28.

📌 On October 23, 2025, The Guardian published Tom Levitt’s moving account of Zeynure Hasan’s battle to free her husband from arbitrary detention: “‘They told me not to speak out’: the woman who took on China – and won her husband’s freedom.” Idris Hasan, an Uyghur activist, was arrested by Moroccan authorities in 2021 following an Interpol red notice requested by China. Zeynure describes receiving a call from her parents, coerced by Chinese authorities, warning her not to act. Despite this threat, she immediately alerted Uyghur advocacy groups and protested regularly with her children. Pressure from Zeynure, human rights organizations, UN special procedures, and concerned governments ultimately secured Idris’ release in February 2025. Now, after nearly five years apart, Idris, Zeynure, and their three children have been reunited in Canada.

📌 Writing for Global Voices, Filip Noubel explains how sociologist Dilnur Reyhan is leading an effort to decolonize the Chinese state’s narrative about Uyghurs, reframing their experience not as an “ethnic issue” but as a struggle against colonial domination. Through the European Uyghur Institute, she works to empower Uyghur youth to reclaim their language, history, and voice. Her mission calls on the diaspora to transform education and culture into tools of resistance and self-determination. Decolonizing the Chinese narrative on Uyghurs: The mission of sociologist Dilnur Reyhan (translated into English by Laura), October 23.

📌 On October 21, a group of NGOs published the 2025 “Global Coal Exit List” (GCEL), including 21 projects announced or under development in China, many of which can be found in the Uyghur Region. The updated list notes that while the Chinese government has pledged to phase down coal use in the power sector, it “continues to promote the growth of the coal chemicals industry.” “Coal industry: New GCEL database reveals dangerous coal chemical expansion,” Urgewald, October 21.

📌 A new report from the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), authored by Raphaël Viana David, Madeleine Sinclair, and Angeli Datt, reveals how small group of States—namely China and Russia—are coordinating behind the scenes at the UN to defund human rights bodies and investigations. “Budget Battles at the UN” details how these governments exploit UN budget processes to cut funding for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and weaken accountability for abuses. Combined with U.S. nonpayment of dues, these efforts have deepened the UN’s financial crisis, posing an existential threat to its human rights system. “Report: How States try to defund human rights at the UN,” October 21.

📌 In this powerful essay for Traversing Tradition, Aydin Anwar bears witness to China’s occupation of East Turkistan and argues that the ongoing campaign of mass internment, forced sterilization, surveillance, cultural erasure, and disappearance meets the legal threshold of genocide under international law. She frames these atrocities not as isolated abuses, but as part of a colonial project aimed at dispossessing and assimilating the Uyghur and Turkic peoples into a Han Chinese identity. Aydin warns against denialism, calling on global civil society and Muslim communities to amplify Uyghur voices, resist normalization of atrocities, and sustain the outcry until justice is realized. “China’s Occupation and Genocide of East Turkistan: Why the World Must Sustain Its Outcry,” October 15.

📌 Sam Ellefson writing for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists spotlights a recent United Nations report that exposes how China is intensifying its cross-border crackdown on human rights defenders, including Uyghurs, using surveillance, intimidation and institutional leverage to silence activists abroad. It highlights how the authoritarian state exploits global platforms, such as the UN system, to repress dissent and sends a chilling message to communities in exile while weakening protections for defenders. “New UN report highlights China’s alleged targeting of human rights activists,” October 15.

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