The Uyghurs, alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. They are one of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. The Uyghurs are recognized by the Chinese government as a regional minority and the titular people of Xinjiang.
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) or the Turkistan Islamic Movement (TIM), formerly known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and other names, is a Uyghur Islamic extremist organization founded in Western China. Its stated goals are to establish an independent state called East Turkestan replacing Xinjiang. The UN Security Council Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee has listed ETIM as a terrorist organization since 2002. The United States removed it from its list of Terrorist Organizations in 2020, claiming it ceased to exist.
Dzungaria is a geographical subregion in Northwest China that corresponds to the northern half of Xinjiang. It is thus also known as Beijiang, which means "Northern Xinjiang". Bounded by the Altai Mountains to the north and the Tian Shan mountain range to the south, Dzungaria covers approximately 777,000 km2 (300,000 sq mi), and borders Kazakhstan to the west and Mongolia to the east. In contexts prior to the mid-18th century Dzungar genocide, the term "Dzungaria" could cover a wider area, conterminous with the Oirat-led Dzungar Khanate.
The East Turkestan independence movement is a political movement that seeks the independence of East Turkestan, a large and sparsely-populated region in northwest China, as an ethnostate for the Uyghur people. The region is currently administered as a province-level subdivision of the People's Republic of China (PRC), under the official name Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Within the movement, there is widespread support for the region to be renamed, since "Xinjiang" is seen by independence activists as a colonial name. "East Turkestan" is the best-known proposed name. "Uyghurstan" is another well-known proposed name.
The East Turkestan Republic (ETR) was a short-lived satellite state of the Soviet Union in northwest Xinjiang, between November 12, 1944, and December 22, 1949. To differentiate it from the First East Turkestan Republic (1933–1934) it is often described as the SecondEast Turkestan Republic, although the adjective Second was never an official part of its name.
Xinjiang historically consisted of two main geographically, historically, and ethnically distinct regions with different historical names: Dzungaria north of the Tianshan Mountains; and the Tarim Basin south of the Tianshan Mountains, currently mainly inhabited by the Uyghurs. They were renamed Xinjiang in 1884, meaning "new frontier," when both regions were conquered by the Manchu Qing dynasty after the Dungan revolt (1862–1877).
Nury Ablikim Turkel is a Uyghur American attorney, public official and human rights advocate based in Washington, D.C. He is currently the Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Terrorism in China refers to the use or threatened use of violence to effect political or ideological change in the People's Republic of China. The definition of terrorism differs among scholars, between international and national bodies and across time and there is no legally binding definition internationally. In the cultural setting of China, the term is relatively new and ambiguous.
Racism in China arises from Chinese history, nationalism, sinicization, and other factors. Racism in modern China has been documented in numerous situations. Ethnic tensions have led to incidents in the country such as the Xinjiang conflict, the ongoing internment and state persecution of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, the 2010 Tibetan language protest, the 2020 Inner Mongolia protests, anti-Western sentiment in China and discrimination against Africans and people of African descent.
The July 2009 Ürümqi riots were a series of violent riots over several days that broke out on 5 July 2009 in Ürümqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), in northwestern China. The first day's rioting, which involved at least 1,000 Uyghurs, began as a protest, but escalated into violent attacks that mainly targeted Han people. A total of 197 people died, most of whom were Han people or non-Muslim minorities, with 1,721 others injured and many vehicles and buildings destroyed. Many Uyghurs disappeared during wide-scale police sweeps in the days following the riots; Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented 43 cases and said figures for real disappearances were likely to be much higher.
Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest of the country at the crossroads of Central Asia and East Asia. Being the largest province-level division of China by area and the 8th-largest country subdivision in the world, Xinjiang spans over 1.6 million square kilometres (620,000 sq mi) and has about 25 million inhabitants. Xinjiang borders the countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. The rugged Karakoram, Kunlun and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiang's borders, as well as its western and southern regions. The Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract regions, both administered by China, are claimed by India. Xinjiang also borders the Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. The most well-known route of the historic Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border.
The Ili Rebellion was a Uyghur separatist movement backed by the Soviet Union against the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China in 1944. After the start of the rebellion, the rebels established the Provisional Government of the Second East Turkestan Republic in 1944. The Ili Rebellion was the start of the East Turkistan National Liberation Revolution, also known as the Three Districts Revolution, which lasted from 1944 to 1949.
The Xinjiang conflict, also known as the East Turkistan conflict, Uyghur–Chinese conflict or Sino-East Turkistan conflict, is an ongoing ethnic geopolitical conflict in what is now China's far-northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang also known as East Turkistan. It is centred around the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group who constitute a plurality of the region's population.
Migration to Xinjiang is both an ongoing and historical movement of people, often sponsored by various states who controlled the region, including the Han dynasty, Qing dynasty, Republic of China and People's Republic of China.
The Dzungar genocide was the mass extermination of the Mongol Dzungar people by the Qing dynasty. The Qianlong Emperor ordered the genocide due to the rebellion in 1755 by Dzungar leader Amursana against Qing rule, after the dynasty first conquered the Dzungar Khanate with Amursana's support. The genocide was perpetrated by Manchu generals of the Qing army supported by Turkic oasis dwellers who rebelled against Dzungar rule.
On the early morning of Wednesday, 30 July 2014, Juma Tahir, the imam of China's largest mosque, the Id Kah Mosque in northwestern Kashgar, was stabbed to death by three young male Uyghur extremists. Religious leaders across denominations condemned the attack.
The Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers by the government of China, are internment camps operated by the government of Xinjiang and the Chinese Communist Party Provincial Standing Committee. Human Rights Watch says that they have been used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other Muslims since 2017 as part of a "people's war on terror", a policy announced in 2014. The camps have been criticized by the governments of many countries and human rights organizations for alleged human rights abuses, including mistreatment, rape, and torture, with some of them alleging genocide. Some 40 countries around the world have called on China to respect the human rights of the Uyghur community, including countries such as Canada, Germany, Turkey, Honduras and Japan. The governments of more than 35 countries have expressed support for China's government.
The Xinjiang papers are a collection of more than 400 pages of internal Chinese government documents describing the government policy regarding Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region. In November 2019, journalists Austin Ramzy and Chris Buckley at The New York Times broke the story that characterized the documents as "one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China's ruling Communist Party in decades." According to The New York Times, the documents were leaked by a source inside the Chinese Communist Party and include a breakdown of how China created and organized the Xinjiang internment camps.
The Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang that is often characterized as genocide. Since 2014, the Chinese government, under the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, has pursued policies that incarcerated more than an estimated one million Turkic Muslims in internment camps without any legal process. Operations from 2016 to 2021 were led by Xinjiang CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo, who dramatically increased the scale and scope of the camps. This is the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. Experts estimate that, since 2017, some sixteen thousand mosques have been razed or damaged, and hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools.
Rushan Abbas is a Uyghur American activist and advocate from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. She is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Campaign for Uyghurs. Abbas became one of the most prominent Uyghur voices in international activism following her sister's detainment by the Chinese government in 2018.
