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.