China’s ‘beautiful Xinjiang’ continues to oppress Uighurs

During his visit to the Chinese province of Xinjiang on August 26,  Chinese President Xi Jinping asserted that the predominantly Muslim Uighur region is enjoying some “hard-won social stability”, and that it is moving toward “unity, harmony and prosperity”. This image of “beautiful Xinjiang”, which Xi talked about, stands in sharp contrast with the reporting of the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

A report OHCHR released last year concluded that since 2017, the Chinese government had committed grave rights violations against millions of Uighurs and other Turkic people in Xinjiang, abuses so systematic and widespread that they “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity”.

Xi urges more work to ‘control illegal religious activities’ in Xinjiang on surprise visit

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has made a surprise visit to Xinjiang, urging officials in the region to conserve “hard won social stability” and deepen efforts in controlling “illegal religious activities”. It was only his second visit since launching an extreme crackdown on the area’s Uyghur and Turkic Muslim population almost a decade ago.

Xi arrived in the city of Urumqi on Saturday, according to Chinese state media, where he heard a government work report and made a speech to Communist party and government officials. During his visit, Xi urged officials to “more deeply promote the Sinicisation of Islam and effectively control illegal religious activities”.

China’s Xi doubles down on hardline Xinjiang policy

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the hardline approach to dealing with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang to continue, despite international criticisms.

Delivering a major speech on Saturday in Urumqi, the region’s capital city, Xi stressed that “social stability” remained the top priority there, as he highlighted the need for counterterrorism measures and further “Sinocizing” of Islam, the predominant religion for the Uyghurs who make up the majority of the indigenous population in the area.

US and Canada follow EU and UK in sanctioning Chinese officials over Xinjiang

Britain and the EU have taken joint action with the US and Canada to impose parallel sanctions on senior Chinese officials involved in the mass internment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province in the first such western action against Beijing since Joe Biden took office.

The move also marked the first time in three decades that the UK or the EU had punished China for human rights abuses, and both will now be working hard to contain the potential political and economic fallout. China hit back immediately, blacklisting MEPs, European diplomats and thinktanks.

Xinjiang: more than half a million forced to pick cotton, report suggests

More than half a million people from ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang have been coerced into picking cotton, on a scale far greater than previously thought, new research has suggested.

The Xinjiang region produces more than 20% of the world’s cotton and 84% of China’s, but according to a new report released on Tuesday by the Center for Global Policy there is significant evidence that it is “tainted” by human rights abuses, including suspected forced labour of Uighur and other Turkic Muslim minority people.

Thousands of Xinjiang mosques destroyed or damaged, report finds

Thousands of mosques in Xinjiang have been damaged or destroyed in just three years, leaving fewer in the region than at any time since the Cultural Revolution, according to a report on Chinese oppression of Muslim minorities.

The revelations are contained in an expansive data project by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which used satellite imagery and on-the-ground reporting to map the extensive and continuing construction of detention camps and destruction of cultural and religious sites in the north-western region.

China running 380 detention centres in Xinjiang: Researchers

China’s network of detention centres in the northwest Xinjiang region is much bigger than previously thought and is being expanded, even as Beijing says it is winding down a “re-education” programme for ethnic Uighurs that has been condemned internationally, new research released by an Australian think-tank showed on Thursday.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said it had identified more than 380 “suspected detention facilities” in the region, where the United Nations says more than one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking residents have been held in recent years.

'Virtually entire' fashion industry complicit in Uighur forced labour, say rights groups

Many of the world’s biggest fashion brands and retailers are complicit in the forced labour and human rights violations being perpetrated on millions of Uighur people in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China, says a coalition of more than 180 human rights groups.

There is mounting global outrage over the atrocities being committed against the Uighur population in the region, including torture, forced separation and the compulsory sterilisation of Uighur women.

Newly Released Database Shows How China Criminalized Muslim Faith

Beijing (AP) — For decades, the Uighur imam was a bedrock of his farming community in China’s far west. On Fridays, he preached Islam as a religion of peace. On Sundays, he treated the sick with free herbal medicine. In the winter, he bought coal for the poor.

But as a Chinese government mass detention campaign engulfed Memtimin Emer’s native Xinjiang region three years ago, the elderly imam was swept up and locked away, along with all three of his sons living in China.

Mass Surveillance System Flags Uighurs For Detention Camps

The watch towers, double-locked doors and video surveillance in the Chinese camps are there “to prevent escapes.” Uighurs and other minorities held inside are scored on how well they speak the dominant Mandarin language and follow strict rules on everything down to bathing and using the toilet, scores that determine if they can leave.

“Manner education” is mandatory, but “vocational skills improvement” is offered only after a year in the camps.

Voluntary job training is the reason the Chinese government has given for detaining more than a million ethnic minorities, most of them Muslims. But a classified blueprint leaked to a consortium of news organizations shows the camps are instead precisely what former detainees have described: Forced ideological and behavioral re-education centers run in secret.

'Allow no escapes': leak exposes reality of China's vast prison camp network

The internal workings of a vast chain of Chinese internment camps used to detain at least a million people from the nation’s Muslim minorities are laid out in leaked Communist Party documents published on Sunday.

The China Cables, a cache of classified government papers, appear to provide the first official glimpse into the structure, daily life and ideological framework behind centres in north-western Xinjiang region that have provoked international condemnation.

Blackwater founder's Hong Kong firm signs Xinjiang training camp deal

A Hong Kong-listed security firm founded by Erik Prince has signed a preliminary deal with authorities in China to build a training centre in Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims have experienced a huge security crackdown.

Frontier Services Group, which specialises in providing security and logistics for businesses operating in risky regions, said it had signed a deal to run a training base in the city of Kashgar, according to a statement posted on its Chinese website.

The firm was founded by Erik Prince, a former US Navy Seal and the brother of the US education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

Prince was also the founder of the US military contractor Blackwater, whose mercenaries had a prominent and controversial role during Washington’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – including the 2007 killing of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians by Blackwater employees.

The Man in Xinjiang

The guidebook said that if we got off the bus at a certain point on the Karakoram Highway, a shepherd would greet us and let us stay in a yurt for a modest fee. The highway was a dirt road in Xinjiang, in northwestern China. I was travelling with a man I’ll call Tim, and we had been on buses for more than twelve hours. When we reached a pasture between snow-capped mountains and saw Karakul Lake glittering in the distance, we got off. The bus pulled away, and it was suddenly very quiet, the late-afternoon sky irrevocably clear, as if nothing bad could happen—not here, not anywhere.

China: one in five arrests take place in 'police state' Xinjiang

One in five arrests in China last year took place in Xinjiang, the nominally autonomous western territory that critics say has been turned into a police state rife with human rights violations.

Analysing publicly available government data, the advocacy group Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), found 21% of all arrests in China in 2017 were in Xinjiang, which accounts for about 1.5% of China’s population. Indictments in Xinjiang, accounted for 13% of all charges handed down in the country last year.

Dozens Reportedly Killed In Xinjiang, China Terror Attack

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese state media reported Thursday that 50 people, including 40 assailants, were killed in a series of explosions over the weekend in the far western region of Xinjiang, in what officials called a severe terror attack.

Regional authorities had earlier said that the explosions Sunday in Luntai county killed at least two people and injured many others.

The news portal Tianshan Net said bombs exploded at two police stations, a produce market and a store. It said the attack killed two police officers, two police assistants and six bystanders, and that 54 others were injured. It said police took swift action and 40 assailants were either shot dead or died in explosions.

Violence erupts in China's restive Xinjiang

Twenty-one people, including police officers and social workers, have been killed in violent clashes in China's ethnically divided western region of Xinjiang in what the government is calling an act of terrorism.

Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas said on Wednesday police were investigating an arson attack in the region where the violence began.

"The region has been the focal point for ethnic and racial tensions for quite some time now," Ortigas said.