Multiple human rights advocacy groups and Western nations have accused China of committing genocide against its Uyghur population. The Uyghur people (pronounced wee-gur) are the largest ethnic minority group in China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang. Mostly Muslim, these Turkic peoples share a cultural and ethnic background similar to those of neighboring Central Asian nations and in stark contrast to that of the Han Chinese (China’s ethnic majority). These differences have led to increasing tensions between the ruling Communist Chinese Party and the Uyghur people.
In the early 20th century, the Uyghurs briefly declared independence from China. However, in 1949, China took control of the region once again. In the 1990s anti-Chinese sentiment and dissent grew. After 9/11, China began to look at the Uyghurs as a threat. Sean Roberts, professor at Georgetown University and author of the book The War on the Uyghurs, said, “Almost immediately after September 11th, the Chinese government produced a lot of documents suggesting that it faced a serious terrorist threat from Uyghurs.” Tensions escalated when in the summer of 2009, 200 people died in clashes between the two populations. After a series of terrorist attacks during the 2010s, China cracked down on the Uyghur population. In 2017 reports began to surface of China’s government sending Uyghurs to so-called ‘re-education’ camps en masse with the goal of combating ‘Islamic extremism.’
Today, around $12M Uyghurs inhabit Xinjiang, officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Of that $12M, over $1M have been imprisoned or detained in internment camps. Leading human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have published reports accusing China of multiple human rights abuses including rape, mass sterilization, forced abortion, forced labor, and torture. Recent decades have seen a massive influx of Han Chinese into the region in an attempt to dilute Uyghur population. China has been accused of religious persecution among the Uyghurs including targeting religious figures like imams, banning religious practices, and destroying sacred mosques and tombs. Human rights activist Nury Turkel said, “The Chinese government likens Uyghur to a cancerous tumor, Uyghur Islam as a mental illness.” For activists like Turkel, China’s oppression of the Uyghur people is an attempt to systematically purge their culture from China.
Today, the province of Xinjiang has become a police state, something out of Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Denizens of Xinjiang are constantly monitored with some of the most advanced surveillance technology in the world. Police patrol the streets, and facial-recognition cameras watch their every move. “I know nothing. Life is good in Xinjiang,” says a Uyghur man on the streets of the province.
China denies all allegations of human rights violations, claiming the ‘re-education’ camps exist to combat separatism and Islamic militancy. They have denied all claims of sexual abuse, physical and psychological torture, mass sterilization, and forced labor. BBC journalist Andrew Marr confronted China’s ambassador in an interview over China’s treatment of the Uyghur people. When Andrew showed him satellite footage of what appears to be CCP members leading blindfolded Uyghur people into trains, China’s ambassador responded, “People in Xinjiang enjoy happy life. China, of course, is strongly opposed to any torture, any persecution and discrimination of any ethnic group of people. Every ethnic group in China is treated equal.”