Hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns have been renamed by Chinese authorities to remove religious or cultural references, with many replaced by names reflecting Communist party ideology, a report has found.
“This is part of the broader efforts by the Chinese government to conflate Islam with terrorism,” said Elaine Pearson, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division.
“The names of their villages serve not only as historical records but also embody the community’s ties, distinct town culture, and values.
Since 2017 it has also issued official Chinese names for locations in Arunachal Pradesh, the disputed Himalayan region where China claims territory.
Pearson said: “Part of the reason 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 didn’t exist any more.”
Since launching its “strike hard” campaign against Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in 2014 in the name of counter-terrorism, the Chinese government has arbitrarily detained millions of people, in re-education camps and jails, criminalising religious acts such as growing beards or reading the Qur’an.
The original article contains 774 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns have been renamed by Chinese authorities to remove religious or cultural references, with many replaced by names reflecting Communist party ideology, a report has found.
“This is part of the broader efforts by the Chinese government to conflate Islam with terrorism,” said Elaine Pearson, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division.
“The names of their villages serve not only as historical records but also embody the community’s ties, distinct town culture, and values.
Since 2017 it has also issued official Chinese names for locations in Arunachal Pradesh, the disputed Himalayan region where China claims territory.
Pearson said: “Part of the reason 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 didn’t exist any more.”
Since launching its “strike hard” campaign against Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in 2014 in the name of counter-terrorism, the Chinese government has arbitrarily detained millions of people, in re-education camps and jails, criminalising religious acts such as growing beards or reading the Qur’an.
The original article contains 774 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!