On Sept. 25, Chinese state media reported that Yao Qiang, an ethnic Han man who had been serving as Vice President of Xinjiang University in the regional capital Urumqi since March 2019, had been appointed as the school’s newest president three days earlier. This marks the first time since the founding of the XUAR by China in 1955 that a Han person has served as the head of the university, which is the flagship institute of higher education in the region
Since fleeing China, Sidik says that she has been unable to contact her family in the XUAR, other than receiving a phone call from her husband in February this year to request a divorce, shortly before he disappeared
Detainees at an internment camp in an area of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where Disney shot part of its blockbuster film Mulan, are being subjected to forced labor making socks and crushing gravel, according to a local official
Beginning in October 2018, Beijing acknowledged the existence of the camps, but described them as voluntary “vocational centers,” despite reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service which has found that detainees are mostly held against their will in poor conditions, where they are forced to endure inhumane treatment and political indoctrination
Germany’s top diplomat urged China to allow a UN mission to investigate the internment camps holding Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and called for the withdrawal of the national security law in Hong Kong that has led to the arrests of top pro-democracy figures, German media reported
Asat Abdukerim and his younger brother Anwar Abdukerim, of Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture’s Qorghas (Huocheng) county, were detained in 2017 for their respective travels to Turkey and the Netherlands, Asat’s Turkey-based daughter, Dilbar Asat, and his sister, Canada-based Marhaba Abdukerim, recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service.
Historically, Uyghur couples have performed nikah on the morning of their wedding, gathering with their immediate families, as well as their best man and maid of honor, in the presence of an akhun, or Muslim officiant. Multiple wedding receptions—complete with food, dancing, and merriment, and attended by extended family and members of the couple’s social circle—typically follows during the same afternoon and evening, or over the course of subsequent days
Many of China’s Uyghur minority have sought sanctuary in Turkey following China’s crackdown on the largely Muslim Turkic-speaking minority. Observers describe conditions of those detained by the Chinese government as akin to concentration camps. With Beijing stepping up pressure on Ankara, some Uyghur refugees fear for their future in Turkey
The complaint, submitted by London-based rights lawyer Michael Polak, referred to evidence the WUC said proves that a number of crimes against humanity are taking place in the XUAR, including arbitrary detention in internment camps, torture, repressive security and surveillance, and forced labor and slavery
The Mosque Rectification drive, part of a series of hardline policies under top leader Xi Jinping, predates the mass incarceration of as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of internment camps in the XUAR that began in April 2017