A Chinese tourism advertisement portraying a medieval Buddhist fantasy, shot in the prayer hall of Xinjiang’s second-largest mosque, has alarmed diaspora Uyghurs, who call it a desecration.
The Nov. 24 fire in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi sparked public rage throughout the country, as people blamed local COVID lockdown restrictions for impeding the rescue and escape of people caught in the blaze. Chinese government officials at the local and national level denied any connection between the deaths in the fire and pandemic prevention measures.
The public arrests of prominent Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities is part of a bid by authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) to instill fear in the local population, according to Uyghur sources in exile
These tales of disappearance are easy to find in Uzbekistan, despite the official censorship hanging over the narrative. Farukh is also an ethnic Uighur but holds an Uzbek passport
Some 200 people died and 1,700 were injured in the three-day rampage of violence that began on July 5, 2009 in Urumqi between ethnic minority Uyghurs and Han Chinese, according to China’s official figures, although Uyghur rights groups say the numbers are much higher