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
Gheni recently spoke with RFA’s Uyghur Service about his more than two-year campaign to locate his family members in the XUAR—which he and many other Uyghurs refer to as East Turkestan—how the Dutch government has assisted him, and his meeting with Ambassador Hoekstra, which he described as inspirational. RFA also spoke with Hoekstra, a former U.S. Representative for Michigan, who discussed U.S. support for the Uyghur diaspora in the Netherlands, thought to number 1,500, and for Uyghurs in their homeland
In a recent interview with RFA’s Uyghur Service, Hassan discussed the viewer feedback she has received about her video and why she has chosen to speak out about the Uyghurs. She said that regardless of the pushback she receives on platforms like TikTok, she will continue to highlight rights abuses in the XUAR via social media.
The XUAR Health Commission announced 17 new cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in the XUAR on Monday, bringing the total number to at least 47 since infections were first reported in the region on July 15—months since the last positive test
According to official figures, the city of 3.5 million has recorded only six symptomatic cases of COVID-19—the disease caused by the coronavirus—and 11 asymptomatic cases, but official media reports said nearly 90 percent of flights into and out of the Urumqi Diwopu International Airport were cancelled and public transportation was shut down Friday as part of strict measures to contain the spread of the virus
Hesen believes that his wife, Nurimangul, was imprisoned in Kargilik in 2017, but is unsure of the fates of their teenaged daughter and twin boys. Hesen’s eldest sister, Patemhan Hesen, and her daughter are both thought to have been sent to the same prison that year as well
Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China Studies at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, has emerged as a leading expert on the mass incarceration of Uyghurs in internment camps in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)
Qurban Mamut, the former editor-in-chief of the official Xinjiang Cultural Journal, went missing around November 2017, several months after he and his wife visited their son Bahram Qurban at his home in the U.S. state of Virginia—the first time the three had seen each other in more than nine years.