by  Muhammad Khan On Apr 4, 2021

Core Middle East: Uyghur People: In The Concentration Camps They Carry Out Various Types Of Torture And Abuse

Aziz Isa Elkun, is an academic at SOAS University of London who has lived in the UK for the past 20 years. Members of his family are victims of Chinese atrocities including his sister who was held in an internment camp for more than a year. He lives in exile in North London.

According to recent reports, Uyghur Muslims in China are being forced to denounce their faith, while China has destroyed 70 percent of mosques in the Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Uyghurs prefer to call their land ‘Uyghuristan.’

Since 2015, it has been estimated that as many as three million Uighurs have been detained in so called ‘re-education camps’. These are basically internment camps where mainly Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are brainwashed and indoctrinated in Communist ideology.

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Cultural erasure This report is supported by a companion website, the Xinjiang Data Project. 24 Sep 2020

What’s the problem?

The Chinese Government has embarked on a systematic and intentional campaign to rewrite the cultural heritage of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). It’s seeking to erode and redefine the culture of the Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking communities—stripping away any Islamic, transnational or autonomous elements—in order to render those indigenous cultural traditions subservient to the ‘Chinese nation’.

Using satellite imagery, we estimate that approximately 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang (65% of the total) have been destroyed or damaged as a result of government policies, mostly since 2017. An estimated 8,500 have been demolished outright, and, for the most part, the land on which those razed mosques once sat remains vacant. A further 30% of important Islamic sacred sites (shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage routes, including many protected under Chinese law) have been demolished across Xinjiang, mostly since 2017, and an additional 28% have been damaged or altered in some way.

Alongside other coercive efforts to re-engineer Uyghur social and cultural life by transforming or eliminating Uyghurs’ language, music, homes and even diets,¹ the Chinese Government’s policies are actively erasing and altering key elements of their tangible cultural heritage.

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Aziz Isa Elkun
Research affiliate, SOAS, University of London

The Chinese government said this was done in order to modernize us, but their true aim was to destroy Uyghur ethnic, cultural and religious identities. I felt as if my father’s body had been brutally torn out of its resting place in our ancestors’ land.

Over the past century, countries have used the tool of nationalism to pursue their own interests. Nationalism is about people, land and the relationship between them. Nationalist propaganda creates a special relationship between a unique people and a particular territory.

The Uyghurs are one of the many peoples who have been left out of this tidy calculation. We are labelled as an “ethnic minority” that suits Chinese version of statehood. China’s policies aim to cut our ties to our land. Uyghur pilgrims are cut off from their places of worship; villages are uprooted from their fields, and families are torn apart. Islam and Uyghur culture are none separated identities of the Uyghurs, therefor they regard the burial place – gravy yard as a holy place that connects the sprits of the generation past and today. Plus, Uyghur graveyard is a symbol of belonging to each other in the Uyghur community that keep connects Uyghurs spiritually, culturally and politically.

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