Economist Tohti was reportedly arrested after 30 police raided his apartment, confiscating documents, books and hard drives. He is most likely to be charged with ‘endangering state security,’ which carries heavy penalties including life...
The U.S. government and human rights activists are voicing concern about the detention of a professor who has been an outspoken advocate for China’s Uighur minority group.
In what the Pentagon called a “significant milestone” in the effort to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military announced that the United States had transferred three Chinese detainees to Slovakia.
Chinese state media demanded severe punishment on October 31 after the government blamed militants from restive Xinjiang for an attack in Tiananmen Square, as the exiled leader of the region’s Uighur minority called for an independent probe...
Chinese police are hunting for two or more men from the troubled region of Xinjiang amid growing suspicion that a fatal car crash and explosion in Tiananmen Square on Monday was a suicide attack.
After the car crash in Tiananmen Square, Chinese authorities have now named two suspects from Xinjiang, the troubled western region whose ethnic Uighur population has become increasingly disenchanted with Chinese policies. ...
On October 28, a jeep plowed into a group of pedestrians and burst into flames on the avenue next to Tiananmen Square, the massive public square in Beijing that is the symbolic heart of the Chinese capital. According to Chinese state media...
Four died after police in Yarkand county, which is administered by the Silk Road city of Kashgar, opened fire on a group of Uighurs in a private residence on October 3 after suspecting them of “illegal assembly,” the Munich-based World...
Discrimination in employment, common across western Xinjian, is one of the many indignities China’s 10 million Uighurs face in a society that increasingly casts them as untrustworthy and prone to religious extremism.
Prominent Uighur rights advocate Ilham Tohti called the local government’s move an effort to “dilute the religious environment” in the area, where minority Uighurs often complain of ethnic and religious repression.
Authorities in China’s restive northwestern region of Xinjiang have shot dead up to a dozen Uyghurs and wounded 20 others in a raid on what they said was a “terrorist” facility, according to local officials and residents.
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A network of immigrant settlements dominated by Han Chinese are adding to ethnic tensions by excluding ethnic Uighurs from commercial opportunities.
“It’s not clear what is being alleged against these people beyond being members of a clandestine organization,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher based in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch.
In 1997 a small town in a remote part of China was shaken by violent protests that led to the imposition of martial law. Some said it was a peaceful demonstration that was brutally suppressed by the government; others that it was an act of terrorism. When Nick Holdstock arrived in 2001, the town was still bitterly divided. The main resentment was between the Uighurs (an ethnic minority in the region) and the Han (the ethnic majority in China).
On July 5, 2009, thousands of Chinese of Uighur ethnicity demonstrated in Urumqi, the regional capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). In the aftermath of the Urumqi protests, the authorities detained more than 1,400 people. In...
I could tell you a lot of potentially useful things about Colin Thubron’s latest travel memoir—for example, that he’s a gifted linguist, a dogged reporter, and an elegant writer. For a start, though, perhaps it’s enough to point out...
The very first anonymous star on the CIA’s wall of honor at Langley, Virginia (the agency rarely identifies its dead heroes), refers to Douglas MacKiernan, the agency’s man in Urumqi, the capital of what is now called the Xinjiang Uyghur...
Over a number of years, the United States has been actively engaged in efforts to improve human rights conditions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, some analysts suggest that the events of September 11, 2001, may make it more...
