Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
A man in Uyghur dress

The persecution of Uyghurs is an ongoing policy of oppression of the Uyghur minority which the government of the People’s Republic of China is engaging in. The Uyghurs are a Turkic people who settled in north-western China in the eighth and ninth centuries. They are particularly numerous in Xinjiang, the largest province of China in the far northwest of the country. There are approximately eleven million Uyghurs here. They are persecuted by the government on account of their distinct culture and their Islamic faith. Although the persecution of the Uyghurs has largely only generated international attention since the mid-2010s, when the government began an Orwellian campaign of mass internment, surveillance and re-education, it has been underway in one form or another since the 1950s, shortly after the communists came to power in China. The persecution of the Uyghurs has led to the periodic flight of large numbers of Uyghurs from Xinjiang, often into Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia.[1]

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Persecution of Uyghurs chronology of events

Map of the Uyghur Khanate

The roots of the Uyghur people in China are to be found nearly 1,500 years ago when the Turkic people began migrating out of Siberia and other parts of northern Asia. Many groups followed the more familiar migratory routes westwards from the Asian Steppe towards the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. Many turned south after a time into Central Asia and conquered a large array of territory both there and further southwest into the Middle East. The Uyghurs were a group that simply moved south from Siberia along the edges of the Asian Steppe and Mongolia to north-western China. For a time in the eighth and ninth centuries they ruled over a state, the Uyghur Khanate, which conquered much of western China and hugely destabilized the Tang Dynasty that ruled China at that time.[2]

Tang revival in the ninth century eventually led to the Chinese conquest of the Uyghur Khanate. The Uyghurs were largely under Chinese rule thereafter, with some shifts over time, notably during the Mongol Conquests of the thirteenth century. Their culture changed over time. Like the Mongols later on, the Uyghurs adopted many elements of Han Chinese culture as the centuries went by. But there were other more unique developments. Their Turkic brethren, groups like the Kazakhs, had begun converting to Islam in Central Asia within a few generations of migrating into that region and coming into contact with the Arab Caliphate. Eventually Islam spread through the Kazakhs and Turkmen-controlled regions of Central Asia and was adopted as well by the Uyghurs. This set them apart within China as an ethnic group that adhered almost universally to Islam.[3]

The adherence of the Uyghurs to Islam and a number of other cultural traits marked the Uyghurs out for persecution by the Chinese communists when they emerged victorious from the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Moreover, Uyghur separatism had grown during the civil war era, leading to the emergence of two short-lived East Turkestan Republics in Xinjiang in the mid-1930s and again towards the end of the Second World War. From the 1950s onwards the Chinese government sponsored efforts to colonize the province with Han Chinese settlers in an effort to break up Uyghur dominance of Xinjiang.[4]

Uyghurs protesting in Xinjiang

The end of the Maoist era in China and the entry into office of Deng Xiaoping saw a more liberal approach adopted in the 1980s. However, the late 1990s saw the re-emergence of separatist sentiment and violent incidents. This culminated in the July 2009 Ürümqi riots in the province, in which Han Chinese people were attacked by groups of Uyghurs. At least 197 people are understood to have been killed.[5]

The incident was a turning point, following which the Chinese government began implementing a draconian policy of persecution. Over 15,000 mosques are believed to have been torn down since and religious freedom has been widely curtailed. Mass surveillance is a daily reality of life in Xinjiang province and re-education camps have been set up, through which tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have passed since the mid-2010s, often being subjected to torture.[6] Hundreds of thousands of children have also been forcibly separated from their parents, while a striking decline in birth rates also indicates a program of forced contraception and even sterilization. International rights’ organizations have condemned this as a policy of cultural genocide designed to destroy Uyghur culture through highly aggressive state intervention. This campaign is ongoing, though it has faded from international headlines after a period of considerable reportage back in the mid-to-late 2010s.[7]

Extent of migration of Uyghurs

Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and the adoption of a persecutory policy towards the Uyghurs in the 1950s, led to the flight of approximately 100,000 Uyghurs over the western border to Kazakhstan, then a part of the USSR.[8] The more recent and more brutal campaign of persecution has not witnessed a comparable exodus from Xinjiang province. The government has tried to curb any mass flight from the province and neighboring countries are perhaps reluctant to see a refugee crisis develop. Moreover, Xinjiang is an extremely landlocked region, far from the sea. The Uyghurs have few options in terms of trying to migrate, with Mongolia, other parts of China, Kazakhstan and a few smaller countries being the only options. This has seen negligible migration elsewhere. For instance, a report in the early 2020s suggested that the United States was processing virtually zero asylum applications from Uyghur migrants.[9]

Demographic impact of the persecution

The foremost demographic impact of the persecution of the Uyghur people by the Chinese state actually comes from the earlier period in the 1950s and 1960s. Owing to the migration into Kazakhstan and the other parts of Central Asia, there is a large Uyghur community in those countries today. There are over a quarter of a million Uyghurs in Kazakhstan, the largest community outside of China itself. Over 100,000 more are split between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.[10] Many Uyghurs have migrated on further west over the years to Turkey and the Uyghur population there is approximately 100,000. There are few other large Uyghur diaspora communities elsewhere in the world.[11]

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References

  1. https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting
  2. Michael Drompp, ‘The Uyghur Empire (744–840)’, in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History (Oxford, 2017).
  3. https://ctbi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Islamic-Cultures-and-the-Uyghurs.pdf
  4. Wang Ke, The East Turkestan Independence Movement, 1930s to 1940s (Hong Kong, 2018).
  5. https://thediplomat.com/2019/07/bearing-witness-10-years-on-the-july-2009-riots-in-xinjiang/
  6. https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china/chinese-persecution-of-the-uyghurs
  7. https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting
  8. Alsu Tagirova, ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: The Migration of Uighurs into Soviet Central Asia After World War II’, in Asian Perspective, Vol. 42, No. 4, Special Issue: China’s Relations with Its Neighbors: Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Issues (October–December, 2018), pp. 575–596.
  9. https://time.com/6111315/uyghur-refugees-china-biden/
  10. https://uhrp.org/report/diaspora/
  11. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-uyghur-uighur-turkey-oppression-rcna97238


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