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Eid Celebrations Underscore Religious Repression In Xinjiang
Posted by Joseph Brouwer | May 13, 2021
On Eid-al-Fitr, the celebratory conclusion of the Muslim holy month Ramadan, videos of dancing Uyghurs outside of a mosque in Kashgar demonstrated, perhaps counterintuitively, the extent of religious repression in the region. According to social media posts, attendance at the dances was mandatory and believers were banned from prayer and private gatherings. In one village outside of Kashgar, Uyghurs marked Eid by singing propaganda songs. In Urumqi, the national anthem preceded prayer. Strikingly, all the attendees were beardless and old. A new report from the Uyghur Human Rights Project shows that imams have been a particular target of China’s campaign of regression against Uyghurs. For The BBC, Joel Gunter detailed the report’s findings:
New Details Emerge from Xinjiang Camps Amid Government Efforts to Discredit Victims
Posted by Joseph Brouwer | Mar 2, 2021
As a campaign of mass internment of Uyghurs in northwest China seemingly begins to transition into a new stage involving forced labor and population transfers, details of the detainees’ experiences continue to emerge. In early February, a BBC investigation uncovered evidence of systematic rape in the camps, “the-situation-that-must-not-be-mentioned” in the words of Weibo users trying to avoid censors’ gazes. At The New Yorker, a visual essay written by Ben Mauk, with artwork by Matt Huynh,
Sholpan Amirken, a hairdresser from northern Xinjiang who married into a prominent religious family, told me that after several of her husband’s relatives were detained in 2017, a male Han cadre came to stay at her house. He advised Amirken and her husband, both of whom are Kazakh, to dispose of books written in Arabic, so she burned them. He also ordered her to