Uighur People
I had never heard of the Uighur people until I read The Kite Runner, a steady best-seller by Khaled Hosseini (available from amazon.com for $8.40 plus shipping) about Afghanistan, his Afghani childhood, his best friend – a Uighur – and the changes wrought in Afghanistan with the revolution.
(Edit: True Faith accurately points out that the best friend was Hazara, not Uigher)
This article is from BBC News April 12th, about the steady campaign against the Uighur in China.
China ‘crushing Muslim Uighurs’
China has been accused by two US-based human rights groups of conducting a “crushing campaign of religious repression” against Muslim Uighurs. It is being done in the name of anti-separatism and counter-terrorism, says a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Human Rights in China.
It is said to be taking place in the western Xinjiang region, where more than half the population is Uighur.
China has denied that it suppresses Islam in Xinjiang.
It says it only wants to stop the forces of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism in the region, which Uighur separatists call East Turkestan.
Detentions and executions
The report accuses China of “opportunistically using the post-11 September environment to make the outrageous claim that individuals disseminating peaceful religious and cultural messages in Xinjiang are terrorists who have simply changed tactics”.
The authors of the report say it is based on previously undisclosed Communist Party and Chinese government documents, local regulations, press reports and local interviews.
The report says the systematic repression of religion in Xinjiang was continuing as “a matter of considered state policy”.
Such repression ranges from vetting imams and closing mosques to executions and the detention of thousands of people every year, it claims.
“Religious regulation in Xinjiang is so pervasive that it creates a legal net that can catch just about anyone the authorities want to target,” said Sharon Hom, Executive Director of Human Rights in China.
The report also reveals that almost half the detainees in Xinjiang’s re-education camps are there for engaging in illegal religious activities.
Uighurs make up about eight million of the 19 million people in Xinjiang.
Many of them favour greater autonomy, and China views separatist sentiments as a threat to the state.
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Kudos to the US-based human rights groups for exposing this.
I read it when it was first released but as I can remember they were called Hazara not Uighur !!
You know, you are right, True Faith. This is from Wikipedia:
The Hazara are an ethnic group who reside mainly in the central Afghanistan mountain region, called Hazarajat or Hazaristan, and speak the Hazaragi dialect of the Persian language. Because of a lack of accurate census data, as well as a history of centuries of discrimination, estimates of the size of the Hazara population vary greatly and are highly politicized. Estimates range from the most common 9% [1] to higher numbers, but the lack of an accurate census for decades means that there is little verifiable information at present. Significant populations of Hazaras also live in Pakistan and Iran.
You were right – his friend was Hazara. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Also from Wikipedia:
The Uyghur (also spelled Uighur; Uyghur: ئۇيغۇر; Simplified Chinese: 维吾尔; Traditional Chinese: 維吾爾; pinyin: Wéiwú’ěr) are a Turkic people of Central Asia. They are one of China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities, consisting of 8.68 million people according to the 2004 Chinese census, but this may be an under-estimation. Throughout the history of Central Asia, they left a lasting imprint on both the culture and tradition. Today in China, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (also known by its controversial term Eastern Turkistan). There are also existing Uyghur communities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Turkey and a smaller one in Taoyuan County of Hunan province in South-central China.[2]
Uyghur neighbourhoods can also be found in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai.[3], as well as in Toronto and Vancouver.
I have never heard about Uighur; so that was benefiting to me 🙂
um, the population numbers for hazaras are much higher than 9% due to the fact that being of the 40 ethnic groups of afghanistan – all of whom intermarried between each other – alot of people, even pashtuns have hazara blood.
Thank you, Afghan. I had no idea. So what do you think a more accurate estimate would be?