Author: Chin@Strategy

Authorities in Xinjiang have banned Uyghurs from using social media apps including Chinese-owned TikTok and tools to circumvent censorship, according to a video released from Chinese police, in what experts say could be the beginning of another major crackdown on the region’s 11 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs. A video notice about the ban was released April 8 by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a state-run economic and paramilitary organization also known as Bingtuan that has played a key role in suppressing the Uyghurs. Violators face arrest, a fine of…

The Congressional Uyghur Caucus is back. Though the caucus never disbanded, the activities of the bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers slowed to a trickle after its chair, Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from New York, retired from his district, which Republican Rep. George Santos then won in the 2022 midterms. Shortly after his shock win, Santos’ personal biography was proved to be a series of lies by a New York Times report. He was then expelled from the House of Representatives in December, less than a year after taking his…

A Uyghur activist on Thursday received a Four Freedoms award from the Roosevelt Foundation for years of campaigning for the rights of Muslim Uyghurs in far-western China’s Xinjiang region. Zumretay Arkin, director of global advocacy and chair of the Women’s Committee at the World Uyghur Congress, was presented the Freedom of Worship Award at a ceremony attended by members of the Dutch royal family and Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Zumretay Arkin is awarded the Freedom of Worship medal by the Roosevelt Foundation at a ceremony in Middelburg, the Netherlands, April…

Uyghurs and sympathetic protesters rallied in Washington, Istanbul and Munich on Friday to remember a 1990 uprising in Xinjiang triggered by anger over China forcing Uyghur women to get abortions and sterilizations. The death toll from the Baren uprising – put down by Chinese troops – ranges from a couple dozen to as many as 3,000, according to the World Uyghur Congress.  Chinese authorities never held a public investigation, and Human Rights Watch said that a reliable tally of the casualties may never be known. The rebellion started on the…

During Ramadan, Chinese authorities have been using a mix of festivals and surveillance to keep the mostly Muslim Uyghurs in the far western region of Xinjiang from fasting, praying and observing the Muslim holy month that ends Monday. In the city of Atush, officials told Radio Free Asia that they organized art events and outdoor feasts and distributed free food during the month. They also held communal meetings in the early evenings to coincide with sundown, when Muslim families typically gather to eat after the daylong fast in a practice…

A delegation of Palestinian and other Arab politicians praised China’s policies in Xinjiang during a visit to the northwestern region, sparking criticism from experts and Uyghur rights advocates for not highlighting the plight of fellow Muslims living in the region. The delegation was led by Bassam Zakarneh, a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council of Palestine and made up of politicians from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan and Tunisia, according to a report by the Global Times.  On March 27, Xinjiang’s Communist Party chief Ma Xingrui welcomed them to Urumqi,…

About 100 Uyghur refugees in Pakistan face deportation in April, after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan is over, based on a new government directive, a copy of which was obtained by Radio Free Asia. The 18 refugee families, who have been living in Pakistan for several years, fear they will be deported to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan or China, where they may face persecution. The Uyghurs are a tiny part of a much larger group of 1.7 million Afghan refugees in the country that the Pakistani government announced last October it…

On March 22, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum hosted an event on human rights violations in Xinjiang, titled “We Don’t Even Know If They’re Alive”: China’s Mass Atrocities against the Uyghurs. At the event, Naomi Kikoler, director of the museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, discussed the urgent need for international attention and action regarding the crisis facing Muslim Uyghurs in northwestern China. Afterwards, RFA Uyghur reporter Shahrezad Ghayrat interviewed Kikoler, who has extensive experience in human rights advocacy, about the significance of the museum’s platform in…

A prominent Uyghur who published books about Uyghur cultural identity and China’s persecution of the Uyghurs has been sentenced to prison, according to a Norway-based foundation and officials in Xinjiang. Erkin Emet, 65, on a list of detained intellectuals in Xinjiang compiled by Uyghur Hjelp Foundation based in Norway, was taken into custody in July 2018, according to the organization’s founder, Abduweli Ayup. Emet’s family said authorities accused him of inciting ethnic separatism and that he is serving a prison term, according to a source in Kashgar, asking not to…

Chinese authorities are collecting genetic data from the country’s Muslim Uyghur minority as part of a forced organ-transplant program marketed to Muslim medical tourists from Gulf states, experts told a U.S. congressional committee hearing on Wednesday. The medical tourists are willing to pay premiums for organs from fellow Muslims who abstain from pork and alcohol, the experts said, with DNA-matched Uyghur “donors” being rendered brain-dead and flown from Xinjiang in the country’s west to hospitals in the east. Chinese authorities insist that forced organ harvesting of executed prisoners has been…