Hoover Institution Since its founding in 1949, the Chinese communist government in Beijing has long considered a northwestern region on its vast political map a primary troubled spot for the regime and has systematically implemented various measures to seek total control of this important territory. Of the four non-China Proper areas, the other three, i.e. Manchuria, Mongolia and Tibet have longer, and more ...

HongKong Free Press When he looks back on his youth in China’s far-west Xinjiang region, Akikat Kaliolla, an ethnic Kazakh, recalls the place’s natural beauty and the big, colourful weddings typical of his majority-Muslim community. But now Emin County where he grew up is a sealed-off pocket in a region experiencing a security crackdown against what Beijing calls separatist elements. Over a million people a ...

UNPO Sources report that the authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are secretly transferring Muslim Uyghurs to other prisons throughout China. The reasons for the transfer are thought to be a lack of capacity to host the vast amount of prisoners, prevention of unrest in Xinjiang and the creation of an information blackout on the camps, which have recently experienced an increasing amount of a ...

Abdukerim Rahman (L) and Arslan Abdulla (R) in undated photos. (From RFA; Public Domain) For decades there was an inside joke that was told by generations of Uyghur students in the School of Humanities at Xinjiang University. The joke went: “How can you be a doctoral advisor without having a Ph.D. degree?” In response they would say, “Work as hard as Abdukerim Rahman!”  Mr. Rahman is a legendary figure amon ...

National Interest The Trump administration is reportedly considering sanctions against China in response to Beijing’s mass detention of ethnic Uighurs in its western Xinjiang province. This comes after a bipartisan group of lawmakers called the situation an “ongoing human rights crisis” and urged the White House to act. Yet it will take much more than a letter from Congress for President Donald Trump to bec ...