The Uyghurs, alternatively written Uighurs, Uyghurs or Uigurs, are a Turkish minority group originating from and culturally associated with the general area of Central and East Asia. Uyghurs are recognized as native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Northwest China.
They are
deemed to be one of the 55 legally recognized ethnic minorities in China. The
Uyghurs are recognized by the Chinese government as a regional minority within
a multicultural society. Traditionally, the Uyghurs have occupied a number of
oases spread across the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin.
These oases
have traditionally existed as independent states or have been ruled by several
empires, including China, the Mongols, the Tibetans and various Turkic
authorities. The Uyghurs eventually began to become Islamic in the 10th
century, with most Uyghurs identified as Muslims in the 16th century. Since
then, Islam has played an important part in Uyghur history and identity.
An estimated 80 percent of Xinjiang Uyghurs still reside in the Tarim Basin. The majority of Xinjiang's Uyghurs reside mainly in Ürümqi, the capital city of Xinjiang UAR, situated in the ancient province of Dzungaria.
The major
community Uyghurs population live in another part of China and are called
Uyghurs living in Taoyuan County, North Central Hunan. Significant diasporic
populations of Uyghurs live in other Turkic countries such as Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbek and Turkey. The smaller groups are living in Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, Australia, Russia and Sweden.
What Are the Allegations on China?
It has been estimated that over a million Uyghurs have been detained in internment camps since 2015. The Xinjiang Internment Camps, formally called Vocational Education and Training Centers by the Government of China, are internment camps operated by the Government of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and its Chinese Communist Party Provincial Committee.
Human Rights Watch says that it has been
used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other Muslims since 2017 as part of the "People's
War on Terror" campaign announced in 2014.
Many
countries and human rights groups have condemned the camps for suspected human
rights violations, ill-treatment, rape and torture, some of them claiming
genocide. Critics of China's treatment of Uyghurs accused the Chinese
government of propagating a campaign of sanitization in Xinjiang in the 21st
century, calling it an ethnocide or genocide.
In a July
letter to the UN Human Rights Council, 22 nations, mostly European except the
United States, referred to "disturbing allegations of large-scale illegal
captivity of Uighurs" by criticizing the Chinese leadership.
Four days
later, 37 countries defended China's "remarkable strides in human
rights" by defending their nation from insurgency, separatism and religious
extremism." The list of signatories included the Muslim-majority countries
of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt.
Australia has called for a United Nations investigation into reports of human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang province, where Beijing's persecution of the Muslim Uighur minority has been widely criticized globally.
Former prisoners and
guards claimed they had undergone or seen systematic rape and violence in
China's so-called re-education camps, where the UN said tens of thousands to
more than 1 million Uighurs had been detained on 3 February 2021, according to
the BBC.
Australian
Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement that "These recent
allegations of widespread torture and abuse of women are profoundly worrying
and raise concerns about the treatment of Uighurs and other religious and
ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
Australia
urged China to provide immediate and unfettered access to Xinjiang to foreign
observers, including UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet,
the statement read.
The US has
said it was "deeply saddened" by the leaks, Reuters said, quoting a
State Department spokeswoman. "These atrocities are a shock to the
conscience and must have serious repercussions," said the spokeswoman in
the paper. The U.S. has previously accused China of genocide.
What Does China Say?
The internment camps were set up under the administration of Secretary-General Xi Jinping with the key aim of maintaining loyalty to national orthodoxy. The Chinese Government defends its activities in Xinjiang as a justifiable reaction to the threat of terrorism caused by the East Turkestan independence movement.
The subsequent repeated terrorist attacks, such as the Baren Township
riots, the 1997 Ürümqi bus bombings, the demonstrations in Ghuljia, the
Shaoguan Incident of June 2009 and the resulting Shaoguan Incident. July 2009
Ürümqi riots, 2011 Hotan attack, April 2014 Ürümqi attack, May 2014 Ürümqi
attack, 2014 Kunming attack and the Aksu colliery attack in 2015.
China has
said that the allegations that the Uighurs were detained are entirely untrue. It
says the crackdown is important to deter terrorism and to eradicate Islamist
ideology, and the camps are an efficient weapon for re-educating prisoners in
their battle against terrorism.
It maintains that Uyghur rebels are fighting a violent campaign for an autonomous state by planning bombings, vandalism and civil disorder, but it is accused of exaggerating the challenge to justify the Uyghur repression.
China has rejected
arguments that it is seeking to suppress the Uyghur population by mass sterilizations as "baseless" and says that reports of forced labor
are "fully fabricated."
Written by-
Anushka Jain
Edited by - Adrija Saha
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