Zeynure Hasan was at home in Istanbul in July 2021 when her husband finally called. It had been four days since she last heard from him as he got ready to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been torturous. But the news Idris now shared with her was even worse. He had been arrested and imprisoned on arrival in Morocco and told he was going to be deported to China. “You should call anyone who can help me, anyone who can rescue me,” he told her, before the…
Tag: Islam
Elderly Uyghur women imprisoned in China for decades-old religious ‘crimes’, leaked files reveal
Hundreds of thousands of Uyghur female religious leaders are estimated to have been arrested and imprisoned in Xinjiang since 2014, with some elderly women detained for practices that took place decades ago, according to an analysis of leaked Chinese police files. There is growing evidence of the abusive treatment of the Uyghur Muslim population of the north-west Chinese region of Xinjiang, with their traditions and religion seen as evidence of extremism and separatism. New analysis of leaked police files found more than 400 women – some more than 80 years…
Academic paper based on Uyghur genetic data retracted over ethical concerns
Concerns have been raised that academic publishers may not be doing enough to vet the ethical standards of research they publish, after a paper based on genetic data from China’s Uyghur population was retracted and questions were raised about several others including one that is currently published by Oxford University Press. In June, Elsevier, a Dutch academic publisher, retracted an article entitled “Analysis of Uyghur and Kazakh populations using the Precision ID Ancestry Panel” that had been published in 2019. The study by Chinese and Danish researchers used blood and…
China closing hundreds of mosques in northern regions, rights group says
Chinese authorities have closed or altered hundreds of mosques in the northern regions of Ningxia and Gansu, homes to the highest Muslim populations in China after Xinjiang, as part of broader efforts to “sinicise” China’s religious minorities, according to a report. Researchers at Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the Chinese government was significantly reducing the number of mosques in Ningxia autonomous region and Gansu province. The Chinese Communist party (CCP) has long maintained a tight grip over China’s religious and ethnic minorities, and since 2016 when Xi Jinping, China’s leader,…
China has sentenced Rahile Dawut to life in prison and would like the world to forget her. We must not | Rachel Harris
I last saw Rahile Dawut in 2016, at a conference we’d organised in Hong Kong. We sat in a sunny precinct, drank coffee, and enjoyed a rare moment of calm before the gathering storm. She was detained in 2017, and this week we have confirmation, via the US-based Dui Hua Foundationrights group, that Dawut has been jailed for life by China for “splittism”: a deliberate attempt to split the Chinese nation. When we met in 2016, Dawut was already experiencing trouble. On her journey from Urumqi to Hong Kong, her…
Travel firms urged to halt trips to Uyghur region over China rights abuses
Uyghur advocates have called on western tourism companies to stop selling package holidays that take visitors through Xinjiang, where human rights abuses by authorities have been called a genocide by some governments. The request comes as China reopens to foreign visitors after the pandemic, and as its leader, Xi Jinping, calls for more tourism to the region. A report by the US-based Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), released on Wednesday, said western tourism to the region risked supporting the normalisation of Chinese government policies that were “intended to destroy the…
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…
Protesters clash with police in China over partial demolition of mosque
Hundreds of police have clashed with protesters in a Muslim town in south-west China over anger at plans to partially dismantle a 14th-century mosque. The unrest broke out on Saturday, seemingly in response to attempts by the authorities to dismantle parts of Najiaying mosque in Nagu, a town in Yunnan province. In 2020, a court ruled that recent additions to the mosque, including a domed roof and minarets, were illegal and should be removed. But when the deconstruction work started over the weekend, local people in Nagu, which is populated…
The Guardian view on India at a crossroads: development, not dictatorship | Editorial
Becoming the world’s most populous nation allows India to burnish its credentials as a global economic and political heavyweight. With a population that is much younger than those of China, the US and the EU, there will be renewed interest in India’s potential to be a beacon of liberal values. The west is eager to draw a democratic giant into its orbit. China and India will together account for about half of all global growth this year. But India risks emulating its bigger northern neighbour’s economic ascent under tight political…
Parliament says China is committing a genocide. Why were officials planning to meet one of the perpetrators? | James McMurray
The oppression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic and Islamic minority people in China’s Xinjiang region has come into stark focus over the past five years. First, minorities were interned in “re-education facilities” for indeterminate periods. Then came evidence of Chinese “minders” being sent to live with Uyghur families and report on their behaviour, of checkpoints on pedestrian streets, face-scanning cameras, the enforced installation of state spyware on personal phones, forced controls on fertility and the closing or demolition of mosques and other religious sites. Throughout all this, a man…