Human rights groups say China has renamed hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns

Chinese authorities have renamed hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns to remove religious or cultural references, with many replaced by names reflecting Communist Party ideology, a report has found.

The study, released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch and the Norway-based organization Uighur Hjelup, documents 630 communities that the government named as such, mostly during the height of the crackdown on Uighurs that several governments and human rights groups have called genocide.

New names that remove religious, historical or cultural references are among thousands of otherwise benign name changes between 2009 and 2023. According to the two organizations that conducted the research, the apparent political changes, which occurred mostly in 2017-19, targeted three broad categories. Any references to religion or Uyghur cultural practices have been deleted, including the terms HojaA title for a Sufi religious teacher, which has been deleted from the names of at least 25 villages; Hanika, a type of Sufi religious building taken from the name of 10 villages; And the shrinemeans temple, which has been deleted from the names of at least 41 villages.

Authorities have also changed names that refer to Uyghur states, republics or leaders since before the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. It is reported that there are no more villages in Xinjiang now.”xelpe“or”the caliph“(ruler), or “mosque“(The mosque) is in their name.

The Uighurs are a Turkic ethnic group found mainly in Xinjiang. They have long had a fractious relationship with Beijing, which many accuse of wanting to break away from Chinese rule.

The report said the names of the new villages were generally in Mandarin Chinese and expressed a “positive sentiment, which the government wants the Uyghurs to accept and express under Chinese leadership”.

In 2018, Ak Meschit (White Mosque) village in Akto County was renamed Unity Village, reports said. In 2022 Dutar's Caracas County village – named for a Uyghur traditional instrument – ​​was named a Red Flag Village.

“This is part of a larger effort by the Chinese government to link Islam to terrorism,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “They see anything Islamic or Arabic as a threat, so they named these things to be more in line with (Chinese Communist Party) ideology.

“We saw it in the way the mosque was demolished, altered, altered. We have seen several examples of how the Chinese government uses it to violate aspects of free expression and cultural identity and religious freedom.”

Rayhan Assat, a Uyghur human rights lawyer and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council whose brother disappeared under the Xinjiang prison regime in 2016, told the Guardian that the changes were part of Beijing's “intention to completely exterminate and eradicate the Uyghur culture and people.” system of apartheid.”

“Their village names not only serve as historical documents but also embody community bonds, distinct town cultures and values. The state-imposed policy of erasure and replacement aims to alienate the Uyghurs from our history, culture and civilization.”

The practice of changing place names – like many of the policies imposed in Xinjiang – was first practiced in Tibet. In 2023 the Chinese government began referring to Tibet as “Jizhang” in official documents. Since 2017 it has issued official Chinese names for locations in Arunachal Pradesh, the disputed Himalayan region where China claims territory.

The increasingly militarized and surveilled environment in Tibet and Xinjiang makes it extremely difficult to disclose information about human rights abuses, and the Chinese government rarely responds to requests for information.

Pearson said: “One of the reasons we know this is happening is that in one case a woman released from a re-education facility tried to get a bus ticket home but found her village no longer existed.”

Since launching a “Strike Hard” campaign against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in 2014 in the name of fighting terrorism, the Chinese government has arbitrarily detained millions in re-education camps and prisons, criminalizing religious acts such as growing a beard. Reading the Qur'an. Others have been persecuted for communicating with international diaspora or traveling abroad.

There is evidence of forced mass labor transfer programs, forced social re-education, torture and enforced disappearances, and forced reproductive control.

In 2021, Human Rights Watch stated that the Chinese government had committed crimes against humanity. In 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights determined that the Chinese government had long-standing human rights violations, possibly amounting to crimes against humanity.

Some governments have characterized its actions as genocide. China denies the allegations, claiming that its policies in Xinjiang are related to terrorism and extremist threats.