Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have detained hundreds of Muslim imams, according to a Uyghur linguist in exile, creating an atmosphere in which Uyghurs are “afraid of dying” because there is no one to oversee their funeral rites
The award will be presented at a virtual conference, “Freedom to Think 2020: Responding to Attacks on Higher Education,” and will be accepted by Dawut’s daughter, Akeda Pulati, who described her mother in an SAR statement Wednesday as “a scholar, not a criminal.”
During the political instability of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Chanisheff, then a new college student, participated in the founding of the East Turkestan People’s Party—a group of Uyghur elites who sought to establish an independent Uyghur state in the Xinjiang region
Often, public security officers in the XUAR investigate detainees to determine whether their so-called “crimes” merit a stint in jail or transfer to one of the region’s vast network of internment camps
Ablet Bawudun, from Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefecture’s Uchturpan (Wushi) county, was detained in early 2017 in one of the region’s vast network of internment camps, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities since April of that year
Tohti, a former professor of economics at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, was sentenced to life in prison for “separatism” by the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court in the XUAR on Sept. 23, 2014, despite having worked for more than two decades to foster dialogue and understanding between ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese
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
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
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.