The 1990s also marked the beginning of China categorizing Muslim Uyghur activists as terrorists. No equivalent liberation arrived for the Uyghurs.
Periodic calls for Uyghur independence from China gained traction in the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the formation of independent Central Asian states like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In light of this oppression, Uyghurs began migrating out of the region as early as the 1960s. Muslim Uyghurs have faced prohibitions on their religious and cultural practices since the formation of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. When did China begin its crackdown on Xinjiang?
Though Xinjiang is the largest region in the country and the largest economy among non-coastal provinces, the majority of Uyghurs still live in rural areas and have been largely excluded from this development. Today, the 12 million Uyghurs living in Xinjiang still represent a slight majority, but the Han population is in the majority in many cities, including the capital of Urumqi. By 1978, that number had jumped to 41.6 percent. At the time, Han Chinese people made up just 6.7 percent of the region’s population. The Chinese government has encouraged members of the country’s ethnic majority, the Han, to settle in Xinjiang since 1949. But with the rise of the Communist Party in 1949, China officially claimed Xinjiang once more. When the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911, several Uyghur leaders led successful attempts to create independent Muslim republics in western China. It wasn’t until 1884 that the region was made an official province of China and renamed Xinjiang, which translates to “New Frontier.” Islam is the group’s dominant religion around the 16th century, Uyghur religious leaders founded several Islamic city-states in what was then referred to as East Turkestan. Tracing their ancestry to the sixth century C.E., when they migrated to the Mongolian steppes, the Uyghurs are a Turkic people whose language is closest to Uzbek. wall painting depicting Uyghur princesses Here’s what you need to know about the Uyghurs ahead of the Olympics’ opening ceremony on Friday, February 4. But over the past ten years, as documents have been leaked to the press and more Uyghur activists have escaped the country, a bleak picture has emerged, leading some observers-including the U.S.-to classify China’s ongoing human rights abuses as genocide. The story of what the Uyghurs have experienced in Xinjiang, from detainment to mass surveillance to forced sterilization, has trickled out slowly due to the stringent control China exerts over its media. to boycott the Berlin Summer Olympics due to the Nazis’ ongoing persecution of German Jews. Decades earlier, in 1936, human rights activists unsuccessfully campaigned for the U.S. Nevertheless, in response, the Soviets and 13 other communist countries boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, hosting a separate set of so-called Friendship Games. Experts at the time called into question the effectiveness of the boycott, pointing out that it deprived American athletes of the chance to compete while having little effect on Soviet policies.
boycotted the Moscow Summer Olympics, protesting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan the previous year. The Olympics represent perhaps the most visible battleground for political maneuvers like the planned diplomatic boycott. The Asian superpower, for its part, denies any wrongdoing.Ī Uyghur family in Xinjiang prays at the grave of a loved one on September 12, 2016-the morning of the Muslim Corban Festival. Congress has been busy, too, passing legislation that bars imports from Xinjiang unless they’re proven to have been made without forced labor. The Trump and Biden administrations both placed economic sanctions on China for its treatment of the Uyghurs. As some critics have pointed out, the gesture is largely symbolic, calling attention to the issue without taking punitive action against the Games’ host.Ĭhina’s repression of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group based in Xinjiang, has prompted widespread condemnation by the international community in recent years. Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada also plan to join the diplomatic boycott. government officials will attend the global gathering.
Though American athletes will still compete in the Games, no U.S. In early December, the United States announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, citing China’s “egregious human rights abuses and atrocities” in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
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