D.T. provides his observations on policy trends and the growing number of political campaigns targeting Uyghurs since 2002. Officially, nothing has changed in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The region continues to be extolled as a paradise for tourists and investors, both from abroad and other regions in China, a place to enjoy pristine landscapes, bountiful fruits and vegetables and exotic p ...

Arienne M. Dwyer This study explores Chinese language policy and language use in Inner Asia, as well as the relation of language policy to the politics of Uyghur identity. Language is central to ethnic identity, and official language policies are often overlooked as critical factors in conflict over ethnic nationalism. In Chinese Inner Asia, any solution to ethnic conflict will include reallinguistic and cu ...

Background: Uyghur, the language of the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, is a Turkic language closely related to Uzbek and less closely to Kazakh and Kyrgyz.  It is written in a modified Arabic script which helps to identify its speakers as Muslims, although a Latin script also exists and was used during the 1970s and 1980s.  It has been the main language of instruction in many schools in Xinjiang alongsid ...

The ethnic identity of Uighurs in western China is being systematically eroded. Government policies, including those that limit use of the Uighur language, severe restrictions on freedom of religion, and a sustained influx of Han Chinese migrants into the region, are destroying customs and, together with employment discrimination, fuelling discontent and ethnic tensions. The government has mounted an aggres ...

The Uyghurs, a Turkic people comprising a major part of the populationof the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), China, also havesizable communities in the former Soviet Central Asian Republics, espe-cially in Kazakhstan, where they numbered 220,000 in 1999 (altogetherthe Uyghur population in the newly independent states numbers morethan 300,000). The Central Asian Uyghur community played a signifi-ca ...