“The worldwide campaign against terrorism has given Beijing the perfect excuse to crack down harder than ever in Xinjiang. Other Chinese enjoy a growing freedom to worship, but the Uighurs, like the Tibetans, find that their religion is being used as a tool of control.”

— Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch’s Asia Director, speaking about China’s suppression of the ethnic Uighur minority, who live in the oil-soaked northwestern section of the country.

The Uighurs comprise eight million of the 19 million people in the Xinjiang province. They are Turkic Muslims, speak a Turkic dialect — most speak little or no Chinese — and desire a greater level of autonomy from China. Uighurs are now becoming even more of a minority in their home region; largely due to the influx of Chinese Han settlers, the Uighur population in Xinjiang has plummeted from 90 percent in 1949 to 45 percent today.  

Sharon Hom, Human Rights in China executive director, emphasized that the Chinese government is using the war against terror as a guise under which to suppress the Uighurs, who lie on the geographic, linguistic, and cultural fringes of China. “As Islam is perceived as underpinning Uighur ethnic identity, China has taken draconian steps to smother Islam as a means of subordinating Uighur nationalist sentiment,” states Hom.

The repression that she refers to runs the gambit from the scrutinization of imams and mosque closures to detentions and executions.  

Mimi Hanaoka