Guardian

China using influencers to whitewash human rights abuses, report finds

According to a new report from Human Rights Watch and Norway-based Uyghur Hjelp, China has renamed hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns, removing religious, historical, and cultural references as part of a crackdown.

The researchers uncovered this finding through the process of extracting data from China's National Bureau of Statistics website. They found that Beijing began stamping out Uyghur names in 2009 and onward for those that reflect government propaganda.

Al Jazeera

Uyghurs are Turkic Muslims. They have long had a tense relationship with Beijing, which accuses many of wanting independence. Elaine Pearson, HRW Asia Director, says this is part of China's Islam-terrorism conflation.

Firstpost

About 11M Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities live in Xinjiang, a vast region bordering Kazakhstan. Mass detentions, political indoctrination, family separations, and forced labor were allegedly part of China's 2017 assimilation campaign.

Renaming places first began in Tibet. Beijing started referring to Tibet as "Xizang" in official documents in 2023. Tibet and Xinjiang are increasingly militarized which makes information of human rights violations difficult to reach the West.

Since 2014, China has allegedly detained millions of Uyghur and Turkic Muslims in re-education camps and jails, criminalizing religious acts like growing beards and Qur'an readings. NGO's have documented mass labor transfers, social re-education, torture, disappearances, and reproductive control.

China has renamed hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns, say human rights groups

China has renamed hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns, say human rights groups

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China has renamed hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns, say human rights groups

China has renamed hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns, say human rights groups

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