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The Uyghurs, alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central Asia and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as the titular nationality of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. They are one of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities.
Uyghur or Uighur is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8–13 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from Xinjiang, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; it is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio. Other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also use Uyghur as a common language.
Rebiya Kadeer is an ethnic Uyghur Chinese businesswoman and political activist. Born in Altay City, Xinjiang,China Kadeer became a millionaire in the 1980s through her real estate holdings and ownership of a multinational conglomerate. Kadeer held various positions in the National People's Congress in Beijing and other political institutions before being arrested in 1999 for, according to Chinese state media, sending confidential internal reference reports to her husband, who worked in the United States as a pro-East Turkistan independence broadcaster. After she fled to the United States in 2005 on compassionate release, Kadeer assumed leadership positions in overseas Uyghur organizations such as the World Uyghur Congress.
Nury Turkel is an American attorney, author, public official, and foreign policy expert based in Washington, D.C.. He is a former chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and former president of the Uyghur American Association.
The Xinjiang conflict, also known as the East Turkistan conflict, Uyghur–Chinese conflict or Sino-East Turkistan conflict, is an 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.
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. Thirty-seven countries have expressed support for China's government for "counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures", including countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Venezuela; meanwhile 22 or 43 countries, depending on source, have called on China to respect the human rights of the Uyghur community, including countries such as Canada, Germany, Turkey and Japan. Xinjiang internment camps have been described as "the most extreme example of China's inhumane policies against Uighurs". The camps have been criticized by the subcommittee of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development for persecution of Uyghurs in China, including mistreatment, rape, torture, and genocide.
In May 2014, the Government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched the "Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism" in the far west province of Xinjiang. It is an aspect of the Xinjiang conflict, the ongoing struggle by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese government to manage the ethnically diverse and tumultuous province. According to critics, the CCP and the Chinese government have used the global "war on terrorism" of the 2000s to frame separatist and ethnic unrest as acts of Islamist terrorism to legitimize its counter-insurgency policies in Xinjiang. Chinese officials have maintained that the campaign is essential for national security purposes.
Mihrigul Tursun, is a reported former Uyghur detainee from Xinjiang, China.
Civil Servant-Family Pair Up, also known as Pair Up and Become Family, is a Chinese government policy that forces designated Uyghur families to be matched with Han Chinese civil servants, with the families forced to host the civil servants in their home. Since the late 2010s, China has vigorously promoted the policy in Xinjiang. Beginning in 2018, over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur families to monitor and assess resistance to cultural assimilation as well as to surveil religious and cultural practices. According to the official state perspective, the policy is to provide Mandarin language training as a way to better integrate Uyghurs and as a means for the poverty alleviation of the region. Policies bearing the same name have also been implemented in impoverished regions in Anhui, Tibet, as well as for left-behind children, widowed elders, the disabled, and in earthquake-affected regions.
Adil Mijit is a prominent Uyghur comedian and one of the Chinese state first-class actors. He is famous among the Uyghur community for his dramas and comedy series and hundreds of shows in local TV. He performed his "Adil Mijit Comedy Concert" in 1997 and 2010 separately in Ürümqi. Mijit went missing from the region in November 2018.
Since 2014, the Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. There have been reports of mass arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, family separation, forced labor, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights.
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 and was elected the Chairperson of the Executive Committee of World Uyghur Congress on October 26th, 2024. Abbas became one of the most prominent Uyghur voices in international activism following her sister's detainment by the Chinese government in 2018. Rushan Abbas also serves as Chair of the Advisory Board of Germany's Axel Springer Freedom Foundation and as a board member of the Task Force on Human Trafficking within the Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum.
Gulchehra "Guli" A. Hoja is a Uyghur–American journalist who has worked for Radio Free Asia since 2001. In November 2019, Hoja received the Magnitsky Human Rights Award for her reporting on the ongoing human rights crisis in Xinjiang and in 2020, Hoja received the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation and was listed among The 500 Most Influential Muslims.
Rahile Dawut is a Uyghur ethnographer known for her expertise in Uyghur folklore and traditions. Formerly a professor at Xinjiang University, where she founded the Minorities Folklore Research Centre, she was disappeared by the Chinese government in 2017 and has not been seen since. In 2023, Rahile received a life sentence for "endangering state security".
Uyghur or Uighur literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Uyghur language, a Turkic language used primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.
Tursunay Ziyawudun, born in Kunes of Xinjiang, is a former Uyghur detainee in one of the internment camps in Xinjiang, China.
The Uyghur Tribunal was an independent "people's tribunal" based in the United Kingdom aiming to examine evidence regarding the ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghur people by the Government of China and to evaluate whether the abuses constitute genocide under the Genocide Convention. The tribunal was chaired by Geoffrey Nice, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milošević, who announced the creation of the tribunal in September 2020.
Rayhan Asat is a Uyghur lawyer and human rights advocate. Since 2020, she has led a public campaign for the release of her brother, Ekpar Asat, who has been held in the Xinjiang internment camp system since 2016, and on behalf of the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China. In 2021, she joined the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council as a Nonresident Senior Fellow and became a Yale World Fellow. Asat is also a Senior Fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and President of the American Turkic International Lawyers Association.
Nurmuhemmet Tohti was a prominent Uyghur writer.
The OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China is a report published on 31 August 2022 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concerning the treatment of Uyghurs and other largely Muslim groups in China. The report concluded that "[t]he extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity." Human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet released the report shortly before leaving the office.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Freeman, Joshua L. "Uighur Poets on Repression and Exile". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
- 1 2 Serhan, Story by Yasmeen. "Saving Uighur Culture From Genocide". The Atlantic. ISSN 1072-7825 . Retrieved 9 November 2020.
- ↑ "The Capital of East Turkestan Is Now in Turkey". News About Turkey. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
- ↑ "Corona, Moria und unser europäisches Wir". cms.falter.at. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
- ↑ "Uygurs reflect on 10th anniversary of deadly riots in Xinjiang". South China Morning Post. 5 July 2019. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
- ↑ "'The Night Is Thick': Uyghur Poets Respond To The Disappearance Of Their Relatives". World Uyghur Congress. 7 March 2019. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
- 1 2 "Relatives of China's oppressed Muslim minority are getting blocked online by their own family members, who are terrified to even tell them how bad their lives are". Campaign for Uyghurs. 17 May 2019. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
- ↑ "BBC 100 Women 2020: Who is on the list this year?". BBC News. 23 November 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
- ↑ "Missing you is painful". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 9 November 2020.