Author: Chin@Strategy

When Uyghur businessman Obulhashim Tursun decided to expand his business buying and selling spices, he set his sights on Iran. Obulhashim, then 26, traveled to the theocratic republic in early 2018, but only got so far as the airport after he landed on March 7. Security officials at Imam Khomeini International Airport, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the country’s capital Tehran, detained him and forcibly returned him to China after 20 days of interrogation, his brother Obulqasim Tursun, a Uyghur expatriate residing in Turkey, told Radio Free Asia.…

“Home” means different things to young Uyghurs – some of whom may have not even visited their ancestral homeland in China’s far western Xinjiang region. That was the theme of the latest annual art competition for Uyghur artists and others held by the Uyghur Collective, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based youth group that has organized the annual event since 2019. Uyghur artist Gülnaz Tursun from Kazakhstan expressed admiration for the young artists’ sense of pride in being Uyghur, evident in their creations.  “This art contest has a great theme, with each painting…

Major automakers including Toyota, General Motors, Tesla, BYD and Volkswagen may be using aluminum made by Ugyhur forced labor in China and have failed to minimize this possibility, Human Rights Watch said in a report. Nearly 10% of the world’s aluminum is produced in Xinjiang, in China’s northwest, where Uyghurs and other minorities are subjected to forced labor in detention centers or through Chinese government-backed labor transfer programs that Beijing says are to alleviate poverty, according to the 99-page report, “Asleep at the Wheel: Car Companies’ Complicity in Forced Labor…

The two leading members of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China have nominated prominent jailed Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti, Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai and two Chinese human rights lawyers for the Nobel Peace Prize.  In a Jan. 31 letter to the members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Rep. Chris Smith, chair of the commission, or CECC, and Sen. Jeff Merkley, co-chair, named Tohti, an outspoken economics professor who advocated the implementation of regional autonomy laws in China and researched Uyghur-Han Chinese relations. He also ran Uyghur Online, a website…

The recent magnitude 7.1 earthquake in Xinjiang’s Uchturpan county caused the roof of an elementary boarding school to partially collapse, leaving seven students with serious injuries and 12 others requiring treatment at a hospital, a local source told Radio Free Asia. Several students remained hospitalized earlier this week with brain injuries from the Jan. 23 quake, according to the school’s principal. “The seven most severely injured individuals have been assessed by experts who confirmed no bleeding in the brain,” the principal said. “The unconsciousness observed was attributed to a lack…

Authorities in Xinjiang are forcing Uyghurs to participate in upcoming Lunar New Year celebrations by learning Chinese dances and playing Chinese songs, state-run media reported, as part of the vast region is still recovering from a 7.1-magnitude earthquake. The Jan. 23 quake that struck a remote northwestern part of Xinjiang killed at least three people and injured five others, and displaced more than 12,400 people in Uchturpan county in Aksu prefecture, next to Kyrgyzstan. The temblor was felt in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.  While news about the earthquake in…

Leveraging the #ofcourse challenge on social media, a short video by three young Uyghur women talking about their cultural identity and persecution facing their people in China has gone viral on TikTok and Instagram, with millions of views. In the 37-second video, the three women — ages 18, 20 and 21, all born and living in Germany — walk along a street in winter, delivering short statements, some humorous and some deadly serious. It plays off the broader #ofcourse trend sweeping various social media platforms where individuals use the phrase…

Northwest China’s Xinjiang region is the first area to implement a government policy promoting integration among ethnic groups to achieve President Xi Jinping’s goal of establishing a unified national identity, Chinese media reported. The regulation calls for the creation of mixed housing, themed venues and cultural parks, and sports and cultural activities that highlight characteristics of Chinese culture and promote zhonghua minzu — a single Chinese nationality that transcends ethnic divisions.  The policy has raised concern among China watchers and scholars, who say its goal is to further erase the…

A 7.1-magnitude earthquake that struck Xinjiang’s Uchturpan county, which borders Kyrgyzstan, early Tuesday killed three, injured five, and displaced more than 12,400 people living in the area, Chinese authorities and Akqi officials said. Xinjiang emergency management authorities told Chinese state media at a press conference on Tuesday evening that the three who died in the quake, which struck at 2:09 a.m., were from Akqi county, just to the east of Uchturpan. An Akqi country police officer later told Radio Free Asia that the three were ethnic Kyrgyz. An official at…

China is the worst jailer of journalists in the world, a report by a New York-based watchdog said, and nearly half of the journalists behind bars in the country are Uyghurs who reported on the persecution of the mostly Muslim group in Xinjiang. In its 2023 prison census, conducted on Dec. 1, the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, found that there was a spike in arrested journalists, with 320 believed to be behind bars – close to a record high. More than half of those jailed journalists were charged…