Category: Uncategorized

Uyghurs marked the one-year anniversary of a deadly fire in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi with vigils over the weekend, demanding accountability for the tragedy that they say killed as many as 44 people, four times higher than the official death toll of 10. The fire broke out at a high-rise residential building in the city’s Tianshan district just before 8 p.m. on Nov. 24, 2022, according to state media. Among the dead were Qemernisa Abdurahman, 48, and her four youngest children. The deaths, widely blamed on COVID-19 restrictions, prompted an outpouring…

The body of a Uyghur educator, researcher and poet who died in prison in Xinjiang in late August was taken by authorities directly to a cemetery for burial instead of first being returned to his family, a police officer and researcher who has compiled a list of arrested Uyghurs said. Abdusemet Rozi, 57, hailed from Suntagh village in Atush, also called Artux, capital of the Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang. He was jailed for a second time in 2022, is said to have fallen ill while in prison, and…

A Uyghur filmmaker on trial for “separatism” and “terrorism” in Xinjiang told the court he was tortured into confessing crimes he didn’t commit, a police officer in the courtroom told Radio Free Asia. Ikram Nurmehmet, 32, and four Uyghur friends – all of whom studied in Turkey together – are being tried in Urumqi People’s Intermediate Court for alleged connections to Turkey-based organizations seeking independence for East Turkistan, the Uyghurs’ preferred name for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the officer, other officials and family members said. The trial of the five…

A German newspaper report that it found close ties between China’s state-sponsored Uyghur labor transfer program and a regional partner of chemical giant BASF has prompted criticism that the company is ignoring the possibility of forced labor at the plant. Xinjiang Markor Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., has operated a plant in Korla – the second-largest city in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region – with German-based multinational BASF since 2016. German business newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Nov. 5 that some of the ownership rights to Xinjiang Markor Chemical Industry are held…

Pakistani authorities have temporarily extended the period of stay for Uyghurs living in the city of Rawalpindi who were at risk for deportation under a government order to expel all illegal migrants by the start of November, a Uyghur involved in the situation said. Nearly 20 Uyghur families — or about 100 individuals — who live in Pakistan’s fourth-biggest city but do not possess Afghan, Chinese passports or Pakistani residence permits have feared deportation to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan or China.  Most of the affected Uyghurs are descendants of individuals who migrated…

A company backed by local Chinese government bodies in far-western Xinjiang has created a matchmaking app that aims to set up single Uyghur women with Han Chinese men, people with knowledge of the company said. “Are there any singles who want to cross the region to marry our brothers from other ethnic groups and start a family?” asks a Uyghur woman in a recent video recorded on Douyin and posted on social media. “In order to carry out ethnic unity on a large scale, our Xinjiang My Fiancée Cultural Dissemination…

The Chinese Embassy in Turkey has rejected a request to release a critically ill Uyghur man serving a 20-year sentence in northwest China’s Xinjiang region so he can rejoin his family in Istanbul and receive medical treatment there, his wife said. Mexmutjan Memet, a 48-year-old former staffer at the agricultural bureau in Xinjiang’s Korla, or Kuerle in Chinese, who later set up a business shipping pears, is being treated at the hospital at Korla Prison since August, though he has shown no signs of improvement, said his spouse Kifaye Éhsan.…

A prominent Uyghur human rights activist, singer and interpreter was among dozens of activists honored at a reception at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday to recognize British contributions to humanitarian efforts around the world. King Charles III expressed his gratitude to Rahima Mahmut, founder and executive director of Stop Uyghur Genocide and the U.K. director of the World Uyghur Congress, for her work defending Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China. The king said called work “a crucial undertaking” and thanked her for “the exceptional contributions you are making to this…

To tell the story of the oppressed Uyghurs of northwestern China, the creators of “All Static & Noise” relied on the firsthand accounts of dozens of men and women who were imprisoned, tortured, raped and separated from loved ones under state-sponsored Chinese persecution. The documentary, which premiered in Washington D.C. on Sunday as part of the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival, also uses animation, satellite photos, news footage and furtive phone videos shot by tourists and academics to shed light on China’s network of internment camps in Xinjiang. An estimated…

Lékim Ibragimov was well into his career as an artist when he visited the Kizil Thousand-Buddha Caves in Xinjiang in the 1990s.  It was a seminal experience that would shape his already renowned work and earn him a special commendation at one of the most prestigious exhibitions for contemporary art, the Florence Biennale in Florence, Italy. The series of rock-cut grottoes, each containing murals of Buddha, sometimes surrounded by other figures, date from the 5th to 14th century and sit on cliffs near Kizil township in Aksu prefecture.  The caves,…