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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…

Robert Silvers has served as undersecretary for strategy, policy and plans at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, since 2021. In early March, he met with members of the Uyghur diaspora community in northern Virginia to discuss the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and the Chinese government’s transnational repression of Uyghurs abroad. In an interview with RFA Uyghur Service Director Alim Seytoff, Silvers discussed how the DHS is enforcing the act, signed into law in December 2021. The law prohibits imports of raw material and products or components…

While global leaders from U.S. President Joe Biden to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued well wishes to the more than 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide at the start of Ramadan this week, China’s president remained silent. Xi Jinping failed to acknowledge Ramadan, one of the most sacred times for Muslims, despite the 11 million-strong mostly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples who live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as well as the roughly 7 million other Muslims in China. Chinese authorities have cracked down…

After fleeing China’s persecution and entering Thailand 10 years ago, more than 40 Uyghurs remain incarcerated in overcrowded detention centers for illegal entry without knowing their fate, their families and rights groups said at a weekend seminar. They are among more than 500 Uyghurs who fled China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to Southeast Asian countries, according to Thai officials and NGOs. They hoped to be resettled in Turkey via Malaysia but only about 100 made their way through the red tape and intransigence of officials. During the exodus from late…

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has called on the Biden administration to press China harder over the jailing of Uyghur activists and to focus on securing the release of four high-profile prisoners. In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the 43 lawmakers said they were “grateful” to see the United States press China over its treatment of Uyghurs at the recent U.N. human rights review, but wanted more pressure. China on Jan. 23 appeared before the U.N. Human Rights Council for a…

Two members of the U.S. Congress have sent a letter urging Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to ban American citizens from traveling China’s far-western region of Xinjiang so as not to “perpetuate and conceal atrocity crimes” that China is committing against Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities living there. “​​American citizens and permanent residents, companies, and other entities should be warned about the risk of enabling atrocity crimes if they participate in tourism to the XUAR,” Rep. Chris Smith and Sen. Jeff Merkley, co-chairs of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China,…