Free Republic

JINAN, China Cui Haoxin is too young to remember the days of his people's oppression under Mao Zedong. The 39-year-old poet was born after the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when the Hui — China's second-largest Muslim ethnic group — were among the masses tormented by the Red Guard. In the years since, the Hui (pronounced HWAY) generally have been supportive of the government and mostly spared the kind of persecution endured by China's largest Muslim group, the Uighur. There are signs, though, that that is changing. Cui fears both that history may be repeating itself and for his own safety...

This year’s McKinsey & Company retreat in China was one to remember. Hundreds of the company’s consultants frolicked in the desert, riding camels over sand dunes and mingling in tents linked by red carpets. Meetings took place in a cavernous banquet hall that resembled a sultan’s ornate court, with a sign overhead to capture the mood. “I can’t keep calm, I work at McKinsey & Company,” it said. Especially remarkable was the location: Kashgar, the ancient Silk Road city in China’s far west that is experiencing a major humanitarian crisis. About four miles from where the McKinsey consultants discussed their...

BANGKOK, Thailand -- China's government sent more than one million majority ethnic Han Chinese to live uninvited in the homes of minority Uighur families in Xinjiang province and report if the Muslims display Islamic or unpatriotic beliefs which need to be forcibly reformed. "Had a Uighur host just greeted a neighbor in Arabic with the words 'Assalamu Alaykum'? That would need to go in the notebook," and reported to China's authorities, said American anthropologist Darren Byler. "Was that a copy of the Koran in the home? Was anyone praying on Friday or fasting during Ramadan? Was a little sister's dress...

One million Muslims are being held right now in Chinese internment camps, according to estimates cited by the UN and U.S. officials. Former inmates—most of whom are Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority—have told reporters that over the course of an indoctrination process lasting several months....

Speaking to a foreign journalist is usually a stressful endeavor for a Uighur in China. Uighurs belong to a Muslim ethnic minority and speak a language closer to Turkish than Chinese. These differences from China's dominant ethnicity, the Han, have been at the root of a tense and sometimes violent relationship between Uighurs and China's government. But there's another difference many Uighurs possess that the rest of China is attracted to: their appearance. With their looks, they can easily flow through cultures," says Liu. "They can play multiple roles. If you need to cast a foreigner in a movie, they...

First-of-its-kind courtroom testimony here has corroborated allegations that the Chinese government has built a network of internment camps in western China where Muslim minorities are held without charge for “reeducation.” Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese national, said she crossed from China’s Xin­jiang region to Kazakhstan without proper papers after being forced to work at a camp where around 2,500 ethnic Kazakhs were being held for indoctrination. “In China, they call it a political camp, but really it was a prison in the mountains,” she told a court last month packed with Kazakh villagers, reporters and a few tight-lipped Chinese...

From DNA samples to iris scans, Chinese authorities are using free physical exams to gather and store biological data from millions of people who live in the country's far west region of Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday, citing an official document that suggests the government's surveillance program in the region is even wider than previously believed. Xinjiang, the historical home of the Uighur ethnic group, has become a testing ground for heavy-handed, high-tech surveillance measures by the government over the past year. China says the measures are necessary to combat extremist violence, but critics say they violate the...

Up to 5,000 ethnic Uighurs from China's violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang are fighting in various militant groups in Syria, the Syrian ambassador to China said on Monday, adding that Beijing should be extremely concerned about it. China is worried that Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people who speak a Turkic language, have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for militants there, having traveled illegally via Southeast Asia and Turkey. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the killing of a Chinese hostage in 2015, highlighting China's concern about Uighurs it says are fighting in the Middle East. Hundreds of people...

- China's ruling Communist Party is hardening its rhetoric about Islam, with top officials making repeated warnings this past week about the specter of global religious extremism seeping into the country. Shaerheti Ahan, a top political and legal affairs party official in Xinjiang, became the latest official from a predominantly Muslim region to warn political leaders gathered in Beijing about China becoming destabilized by the "international anti-terror situation." Over the past year, President Xi Jinping has directed the party to "Sinicize" the country's ethnic and religious minorities, while regional leaders in Xinjiang, home to the Uighur (WEE-gur) ethnic minority, have...

China said Saturday that it will not renew press credentials for a French journalist, effectively expelling her following a harsh media campaign against her for questioning the official line equating ethnic violence in China's western Muslim region with global terrorism. Expecting the move, Ursula Gauthier, a longtime journalist for the French news magazine L'Obs, said late Friday night that she was prepared to leave China. ...

Silicon Valley is in a panic following an announcement that China is considering sweeping counterterrorism legislation. The law would require tech companies to provide the Chinese government with NSA-like access to private data, terms the industry may be forced to accept if they want to do business in the world’s most populated country. The Edward Snowden revelations about the American spying apparatus have numerous impacts. One of the latest is a decision by the Chinese government to terminate contracts with a number of major US-based technology brands. This could stem from news that the NSA installed spyware into the products of major US technology companies, thus using these brands...

Outside a mosque in China’s restive west, a government-appointed Muslim cleric was dodging a foreign reporter’s question about why young men of the Uighur ethnic minority don’t have beards when one such youth interrupted. “Why don’t you just tell them the truth?” he shouted to the cleric…. “It’s because the government doesn’t allow beards.” A plainclothes Uighur policeman swiftly rebuked the young man. “Be careful what you say,” he warned. […] … Such a mood pervades Xinjiang’s south, a vast, mainly rural region that’s become a key battleground in the ruling Communist Party’s struggle to contain escalating ethnic violence that...

Dozens of people were killed or wounded in a terrorist attack in Kashgar prefecture in a new episode of violence in China's conflict-ridden northwestern Xinjiang region, the official Xinhua news agency reported Tuesday. The attack, which was not reported until Tuesday, began on Monday near the police station and other government buildings in the town of Elixku, where a group of people armed with knives carried out a series of assaults. Later, some of the attackers headed for the nearby town of Huangdi, where they stabbed civilians and destroyed about 30 vehicles, "killing dozens of Uighurs and Han Chinese," police...

BEIJING (AP) — Students and civil servants in China's Muslim northwest, where Beijing is enforcing a security crackdown following deadly unrest, have been ordered to avoid taking part in traditional fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

MIRAMSHAH: At least 73 suspected local and foreign militants were killed in a series of pre-dawn air strikes on hideouts and bases in North Waziristan and in a later clash following an attack on security personnel. An army major and three other security personnel died in the clash. The targets of the air strikes were strongholds of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (Etim) — a militant outfit comprising largely Turkic-speaking militants from Uzbekistan and Uighurs from China’s north-western autonomous region of Xinjiang, a security official said. China has blamed Etim, which also uses the name of Turkistan Islamic Party, for...

STATE DEPARTMENT — With Russia's most vocal critics imposing economic sanctions over Crimea, some of Moscow's allies are also questioning its actions in Ukraine. In Syria's civil war, China and Russia have together blocked tougher action against President Bashar al-Assad, denouncing foreign support for the rebels as a breach of Syrian sovereignty. Now, China has quietly split from Russia over Crimea -- on the same issue of sovereignty. "China always respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states. The Crimean crisis should be resolved politically under the frameworks of law and order. We call on all sides to remain...

Mystery surrounds official Chinese reports Wednesday of a violent clash between “suspected terrorists” and the authorities in the restive Muslim province of Xinjiang yesterday that left 21 people dead, including 15 officials. According to a statement on the provincial government website, a group “planning to conduct violent terrorist activities” armed with knives seized three local officials who had surprised them in a house near the city of Kashgar

TWO men who allegedly tried to hijack a plane in China were beaten to death by passengers and crew. The Global Times newspaper reported that two of the suspects died in hospital from injuries they suffered during the ensuing fight with passengers and crew on board. The men were part of a six-strong gang involved in the foiled hijack of a Tianjin Airlines flight bound for the regional capital of Urumqi last Friday. Just minutes after the flight took off from Hetian, southwest Xinjiang, the men, all aged between 20 and 36, stood up and announced their plans to terrified...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=15202 MMEDIATE RELEASE No. 291-12 April 19, 2012 Detainee Transfer Announced The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of two Uighur detainees from the detention facility at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to the Government of El Salvador. These detainees were subject to release from Guantanamo as a result of a court order issued on October 7, 2008 by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and are voluntarily resettling in El Salvador. As directed by the President's January 22, 2009, executive order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a...

China typically exercises caution when making public statements about terrorist attacks in Xinjiang. When China blames attacks on Pakistan-based terrorist organizations, such as the possibly defunct East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), it risks adding tensions to the Sino-Pakistani “all-weather” friendship. [1] However, when China blames attacks on local Uyghurs it is tantamount to an admission that its policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have not created a “harmonious society.” Zhou Yongkang (left), member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), shakes hands with a local Uygur farmer...