Difference between revisions of "East Turkestan (Country)"
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| − | East Turkestan (sometimes '''Xinjiang''') is a country currently under the occupation of [[People's Republic of China]]. <ref>https://www.iuhrdf.org/uyghurs</ref> The main inhabitants of East Turkestan are the Uighurs among other Turkic peoples such as Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbek and Tatars. Over 3 million native [[Uyghur]]s are held in [[Chinese Communist]] [[gulag]]s.<ref>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-un-idUSKBN1KV1SU</ref> | + | East Turkestan (sometimes '''Xinjiang''') is a country currently under the occupation of [[People's Republic of China]]. <ref>https://www.iuhrdf.org/uyghurs</ref> The main inhabitants of East Turkestan are the Uighurs among other Turkic peoples such as Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbek and Tatars. Over 3 million native [[Uyghur]]s are held in [[Chinese Communist]] [[Xinjiang Concentration Camps|gulag]]s.<ref>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-un-idUSKBN1KV1SU</ref> |
==Location== | ==Location== | ||
Revision as of 03:06, June 10, 2021
| East Turkestan Sherqiy Turkistan 中华人民共和国
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|---|---|
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| Flag | |
| Capital | Urumqi |
| Language | Uyghur (official) |
East Turkestan (sometimes Xinjiang) is a country currently under the occupation of People's Republic of China. [1] The main inhabitants of East Turkestan are the Uighurs among other Turkic peoples such as Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbek and Tatars. Over 3 million native Uyghurs are held in Chinese Communist gulags.[2]
Location
East Turkestan borders Mongolia, Russia (Siberia), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, India (Ladakh), Tibet and China(Gansu)
History
East Turkestan was an independent country until the year 1949, when it was invaded by the Communist Chinese. From the years 1951-1959, there were over 14 major armed rebellions against the Chinese occupation. The largest armed rebellion took place in Khotan from December 28-31, 1954.
CCP occupation
Since an outbreak of demonstrations and ethnic unrest in 2009 and clashes involving Uyghurs and Chinese occupation personnel in East Turkestan that spiked between 2013 and 2015, Chinese Communist Party leaders have sought to control it through more intensive security measures aimed at combatting “terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.” According to CCP official data, criminal arrests in occupied East Turkestan increased by over 300% between 2015 and 2020 compared to the previous five years.
In tandem with a new national religious policy, also referred to as “Sinicization,” XUAR authorities have instituted measures to assimilate Uyghurs into Han Chinese society and reduce the influences of Uyghur, Islamic, and Arabic cultures and languages. The XUAR government enacted a law in 2017 that prohibits “expressions of extremification,” and placed restrictions, often imposed arbitrarily, upon face veils, beards and other grooming, some traditional Uyghur customs including wedding and funeral rituals, and halal food practices. Local authorities reportedly also have banned some Islamic names for children. Thousands of mosques in occupied East Turkestan have been demolished as part of what the government calls a “mosque rectification” campaign; others have been “Sinicized”—minarets have been taken down, onion domes have been replaced by traditional Chinese roofs, and Islamic motifs and Arabic writings have been removed.
Some Uyghurs—estimates range from hundreds to thousands—have fled religious restrictions and persecution in China during the 2010s. Many have migrated through Southeast Asia to Turkey, which has a large Uyghur community.
By contrast, the Hui, another Muslim minority group in China who number around 11 million, largely have practiced their faith with less government interference. The Hui are more geographically dispersed and culturally assimilated than the Uyghurs, are generally physically indistinguishable from Hans, and do not speak a non-Chinese language.
Many experts attribute the proliferation and intensification of security measures in the region to new national and provincial counterterrorism laws and to the leadership of Chen Quanguo, the former Party Secretary of Tibet, who was appointed Party Secretary of the XUAR in 2016.
Recent security measures include the following:
- Police Presence and Surveillance: Thousands of “convenience” police stations, furnished with antiriot and high-tech surveillance equipment, have been installed.
- Biometric data collection: Authorities have systematically collected and cataloged DNA samples, blood types, and fingerprints and performed eye scans of Uyghurs for identification purposes as part of its social stability campaign, often under the guise of “health physicals.”
- Internet and Social Media Controls: Uyghurs in some areas of the XUAR are required to install an application on their mobile phones that enables authorities to monitor their online activities.
- Home stays: The government has sent an estimated one million officials and state workers from outside the XUAR, mostly ethnic Han, to live temporarily in the homes of Uyghurs to assess their hosts’ loyalty to the Communist Party.[4]
References
- Ma Dazheng, National Interest is beyond Everything–Observations and Reflections on the [East Turkistan] Xinjiang Stability (Institute of Social Science of China, 2002)
- Hassan H. Karrar, The New Silk Road Diplomacy: China’s Central Asian Foreign Policy Since the Cold War