While the Uyghurs have been around for centuries, the conflict surrounding them has only garnered significant global attention in recent years – sparking 43 countries and counting to condemn the Chinese government for their human rights abuses toward this community and prompting many to ask: Who is this group, what’s happening to them and what’s the path forward?
Who are the Uyghurs?
The Uyghurs are a minority ethnic group who speak their own language and comprise almost half of Xinjiang, which has officially been dubbed the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) since 1955. Here, nearly 12 million Uyghurs live alongside other ethnic groups such as the Han Chinese – the largest ethnic group in China – the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Mongols, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Tatars.
While Uyghurs represent an ethnic group rather than a religion, they are predominantly Muslim and have been practicing Islam since the ninth century, during which the Karakhanid – a Turkic fiefdom – ruled over Central Asia. Before that, Uyghurs also practiced Zoroastrianism and Buddhism.
Although the name XUAR suggests independent governance, the Chinese government still extends its power over Xinjiang. The region enjoyed independent statehood until 1759, when it was conquered by imperial armies of China’s Manchu dynasty. Since then, insurrections against Chinese rule have occurred throughout history. The most significant uprising happened in 1945, when local forces took power and revived an independent East Turkestan Republic, which survived until 1949 when it was dismantled by the Chinese military, according to Human Rights Watch.
Photos: China’s Largest Detention Center
Since its annexation in 1955, Han Chinese migration has ramped up in the region – bringing the 2020 population to about 42% Han and 45% Uyghur, at least according to Chinese census data, which may or may not be reliable.
Because of growing tensions between the Uyghurs and Han Chinese, the Uyghur separatist movement still exists in the Xinjiang region – which China dubs as a “vain wish” that denies history.
While not all Uyghurs are in favor of separatism, those who wish for an independent Uyghur state believe it is necessary to end the mistreatment of their people in the Xinjiang region.
Why are Uyghurs in and out of the headlines?
Multiple reports from human rights and civil society organizations have found that Uyghurs have been detained in prisons and internment camps since at least 2017, with other abuses starting even earlier.
While the Chinese government argues that these re-education camps are meant to provide Uyghurs with vocational training to combat poverty, separatism and Islamic extremism, Jewher Ilham – a Uyghur rights advocate with the Coalition to End Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region whose father, prominent Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, has been detained in Chinese prison since 2014 – says that the Chinese government’s definition of extremism is intentionally broad to allow for mass detentions.
“When they’re talking about vocational training schools, they’re not talking about normal schools,” she explains. “We’re talking about people who cannot go home. They have to learn skills, not only like yarning, sewing or washing sheets, we’re also talking about learning Han Chinese, learning Chinese government ideologies, Communist Party ideologies.”
One of the main ways that Uyghur rights advocates say Uyghurs are exploited after detainment is through forced labor. The region of Xinjiang produces about a fifth of the world’s cotton supply, causing concern among human rights groups who contend that cotton exports from this area are picked through forced labor from Uyghurs.
In the cotton industry and beyond, many companies have been accused of using Uyghur forced labor, including Nike and Apple.
Countries around the world have condemned these abuses, including the U.S., which chose not to send any official representatives to the 2022 Beijing Olympics. In the words of now former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, U.S. diplomats were skipping the contests due to China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”
China argues against all of these claims of forced labor. In a white paper on the Uyghur population, the Chinese government stated that the allegations of forced labor are “lie[s]” made by “anti-China forces” to demonize China for combatting terrorism and extremism that in turn supress development in Xinjiang and “deprive the local people in Xinjiang of their rights to work.”
Why would China want to persecute the Uyghurs?
The Chinese government uses several reasons to justify its actions toward the Uyghur community.
For one, in the late 1990s, bombings on public transportation and at a police station in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi were blamed on “East Turkestan separatists.” This led to the Chinese Communist Party launching a campaign against separatism – which increased the amount of Uyghurs in the criminal justice system, forced Uyghurs into rural areas and increased pressure for Uyghur women to marry Han Chinese men, according to Human Rights Watch.
Then, 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror happened, after which many world leaders made the choice to side with the U.S. in waging a war against terrorism – including China. This gave the Chinese government incentive to begin tightening its control in the Xinjiang region for the purpose of combating a “limited” and “not systematic” extremist and separatist insurgency, according to Kelley Currie, the former U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues and the U.S. representative at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Tensions between the Uyghurs and the Chinese government rose further in 2008, around the time of the Beijing Olympics, when two extremists launched an attack on Chinese personnel, killing 16 police officers in Kashgar.
A week later, Uyghur separatists launched a series of attacks against Chinese government buildings and officials leading up to the Games – bringing home-made explosives into multiple government sites in Kuqa city, which resulted in the death of one security guard and injuries to two police officers. Four of the attackers blew themselves up before they were arrested, while three were shot by police and two were captured.
But the Chinese government’s crackdowns on Uyghur rights truly ramped up after the 2009 riots in Urumqi.
On July 5, 2009, a peaceful protest in Urumqi against “perceived Chinese government inaction” on the death of a Uyghur factory worker turned into a riot after police became violent with protestors – using tear gas on them, beating them and even shooting into the crowds, according to Amnesty International.
While eyewitness accounts have cast doubt over official records of the riots, official figures cite 197 deaths as a result of them, with most of these being Han Chinese. In response, the Chinese government spearheaded a campaign against the Uyghurs that involved deportations and mass detainments in which Uyghur prisoners were subject to torture and ill-treatment. The government also increased its public security budget for Xinjiang by almost 90% in 2010.
Numerous reports of disappearances also emerged during this time and families seeking information about their missing relatives were subject to intimidation, threats and even detainment.
Today, 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Muslims are estimated to be in internment camps in Xinjiang, according to the Associated Press.
Currie adds that the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghurs hinges on ethnic discrimination and a discomfort with their assertion of their distinct ethnic identity.
“[Throughout history], the Chinese Communist Party would become uncomfortable with these reassertions of identity in the ethnic areas,” she explains. “Because these identities are different from the majority Han identity. You have people occupying what’s essentially half of China’s landmass who are not ethnically Han Chinese, they have a distinct culture, they speak their own languages, they practice different religions
and they have different value systems.”
What now?
While the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics marked some progress for Uyghur rights advocates – with the U.S., Canada, Australia and several other countries engaging in a diplomatic boycott of the Games and citing China’s human rights abuses as their reasoning – advocates still push for more.
Uyghur rights activists see the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act that passed in Congress this past December as a critical next step in protecting the autonomy of Uyghurs and other minority groups in Xinjiang and ending the circulation of products made with forced labor.
The bill, which prohibits the import of all goods made “wholly or in part” by forced labor in China and particularly in the Xinjiang region, was signed into law by President Joe Biden in December 2021.
Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, says the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act shows that “the extent of repression targeting Uyghurs and others across China has led the U.S. to say, ‘Look, we have to do business differently.’”
“[The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act] is largely a response to the Chinese government’s incredible intransigence regarding not just access to the region, but access to workers across the country,” she says. “It’s in a sense that it’s not OK anymore for companies to shrug and say, ‘Well, in a global economy supply chains are complicated and it’s hard to know all the way down to the ground who we’re doing business with.’”
The act also explicitly recognizes that the Chinese government has detained 1.8 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other minority groups and has “subjected detainees to forced labor, torture, political indoctrination, and other severe human rights abuses.”
Babur Ilchi, the program director at Campaign for Uyghurs, says that while this legislation is a “necessary step forward,” he also recognizes that the act still has gaps to fill, as it does not account for forced labor outside of Xinjiang.
To those who doubt the ongoing human rights violations against the Uyghur community, Ilham points to those coming forward with their stories.
“Every Uyghur in the diaspora is living evidence of what’s happening in the Uyghur region,” she says.