Uyghurs

Uyghurs (also Uyghurs or Uyghurs; proper name: ئۇيغۇر Uyghur; Chinese 维吾尔族, pinyin Wéiwú'ěrzú) are a Turkic-speaking ethnic group that has its settlement center in the area of former Turkestan, especially in today's Chinese Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang.

The Uyghurs almost all belong to the religious community of Islam. They are predominantly oasis farmers, small traders and craftsmen. They carry on traditions that have their origins in Turko-Persian Central Asia. In the 20th century, they were strongly influenced by Soviet Central Asia and adapted to changing external regimes over their country, punctuated by only briefly successful independence movements.

Most of the world's estimated more than 15 million (as of 2010) Uyghurs now live in the Tarim Basin, located in southern Xinjiang. They constitute the majority population in this region, which was conquered by the Qing in 1759 and then eventually fell under loosely held Chinese rule under the Qing. Although the Tarim Basin was settled predominantly by a Turkic-speaking population for several centuries, the formulation and formal establishment of their modern identity under the ethnonym "Uyghurs" did not occur until the 20th century. At a conference in Tashkent in 1921, representatives of the New Uyghur-speaking parts of the population of western Turkestan, whose language does not derive directly from Old Uyghur, or does so only to a small extent, adopted the name "Uyghur" for themselves.

Over time in the 20th century, successive Chinese states tightened their rule over the Uighur-populated land. Since 1949, the People's Republic of China increased the percentage of Han Chinese in Xinjiang from 5% to 40% with an aggressive settlement policy, molding the land into a tightly controlled assimilationist settler colony ruled by a Han Chinese-dominated bureaucracy in the 21st century. Since 2017, citing the need for greater internal security, the Chinese government has pursued a particularly deep and repressive strategy against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, including mass internment, extensive re-education, and increased pressure on the Uyghur diaspora.

On the part of various Western scholars, the goal of Chinese policy in Xinjiang is described as the "Sinicization" of indigenous cultures and the complete "transformation" of the thoughts and behaviors of the Uyghur community, as well as a "deliberate policy of erasing Uyghur cultural memory" (Rachel Harris, SOAS University of London), the "erasure of an indigenous knowledge system and the basic elements that constitute the core values of Uyghur life: Language, religion, and culture" (Darren Byler, University of Colorado Boulder) and the attempt to separate Uyghur experiences and identities from their landscape (Rian Thum, University of Nottingham). The U.S.-based think tank Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, in collaboration with the Canada-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, published a report in 2021 by more than 30 international experts that accused the Chinese leadership of bearing state responsibility for an ongoing genocide against the Uighurs and of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. A 2021 report prepared by Human Rights Watch and Stanford University accused the Chinese government of committing nearly all of the crimes against humanity listed in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang and of being responsible for a "widespread and systematic policy of mass internment, torture, and cultural persecution."

From the political side, various Western states officially classified the Chinese state's actions against the Xinjiang Uyghurs as "genocide" in 2021, for example by the U.S. government under Donald Trump and under Joe Biden, as well as by the Canadian, Dutch, British and Lithuanian parliaments. According to the German government, Chinese policy measures are aimed at "Sinicizing" the religious and cultural identities of minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet. In March 2021, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union coordinated with each other to impose sanctions on former and incumbent Chinese officials for alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights called for a thorough and independent assessment of reports of arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, sexual violence, and forced labor in Xinjiang. In August 2018, the United Nations called on China to end mass detentions at the facilities China denied at the time and is seeking to negotiate ensuring full access to the Xinjiang region for U.N. representatives with the PRC to investigate allegations of human rights abuses committed against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang through an on-site investigation. However, the PRC has so far (as of April 2021) officially rejected the conduct of an investigation by UN representatives in Xinjiang.

History

Radio reports and features

• Violence against Uyghurs. (YouTube video - 5:28min.) In: DW-TV Politik Direkt. Deutsche Welle (DW), July 2009; accessed January 11, 2020.
• Ulrich Delius: The precarious situation of the Uyghurs in China. (YouTube video - 14:19min.) In: Society for Threatened Peoples (STP). July 2013; accessed January 11, 2020.
• China: The Uyghurs - a people in danger. (YouTube video - 24:24min.) In: arte Reportage. ARTE, May 2019; accessed January 11, 2020.
• Turkey: Exiled Uyghurs as victims of trade relations between Xi Jinping and Erdogan? (Video - 1:23min.) In: Europamagazin. ARD Mediathek, September 2019; retrieved 11 January 2020 (video available until: 15.09.2020).
• Muslim minority: China's leadership has Uyghur graves destroyed. (YouTube video - 1:45min.) In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. October 2019; retrieved 11 January 2020.
• China and the Uyghurs. (YouTube video - 2:04:50 hrs.) In: zenith (magazine). November 2019; retrieved 27 January 2020.
• Elmar Theveßen: Satellite images of destruction. (Video - 2:49min.) In: heute plus. ZDFmediathek, November 2019; retrieved 20 January 2020 (video available until: 25 Nov 2020).
• Sylvain Louvet: Monitored: Seven billion in sight. (YouTube video - 1:29:26 hrs.) The "digital gulags" of China's Xinjiang province, into a world of facial recognition, emotion detectors. In: arte Reportage. ARTE, April 2020; accessed April 24, 2020 (Uighur theme from 0:56:30 hr - available until June 20, 2020).
• Monitored, scanned, imprisoned. China's hunt for Uyghurs. (YouTube video - 7:01min.) In: ZDFdoku. ZDFinfo, August 2020; accessed October 11, 2020.
• Robin Barnwell: Undercover in China: The Oppression of the Uyghurs. (ARD media library video - 43:26 min.) In: Die Story. WDR, September 2020; accessed October 11, 2020 (available until September 30, 2021).