Updated March 6June 18, 2019
Uyghurs in China
Uyghurs (also spelled “Uighurs”) are an ethnic group living
primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
(XUAR) in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s)
northwest. Uyghurs speak a Turkic language and practice a
moderate form of Sunni Islam. The XUAR, often referred
to simply as Xinjiang (pronounced “SHIN-jyahng”), is a
provincial-level administrative region which comprises
about one-sixth of China’s total land area and borders eight
countries. The region is rich in minerals, and has China’s
largest coal and natural gas reserves and a fifth of the
country’s oil reserves. Beijing hopes to promote Xinjiang as
a key link in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which
includes Chinese-backed infrastructure projects and energy
development in neighboring Central and South Asia.
Source: CRS using U.S. Department of State Boundaries; Esri;
Global Administrative Areas; DeLorme; NGA.
Some Uyghurs refer to Xinjiang as “East Turkestan,” a term
regarded as subversive by PRC leaders. All or parts of
Xinjiang have been under the political control or influence
of Chinese, Mongols, and Russians for long periods of the
region’s documented history, along with periods of Turkic
or Uyghur rule. Uyghurs played a role in the establishment
of two short-lived East Turkestan Republics in the 1930s
and 1940s. The PRC asserted control over Xinjiang in 1949
and established the XUAR in 1955.
Uyghurs once were the predominant ethnic group in the
XUAR; they now constitute roughly 45% of the region’s
population of 24 million, or around 10.5 million, as many
Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group in China, have
migrated there, particularly to the provincial capital,
Urumqi. Many Uyghurs complain that Hans have benefitted
disproportionately from economic development in Xinjiang.
Human Rights Issues
Since an outbreak of demonstrations and ethnic unrest in
2009 and clashes involving Uyghurs and Xinjiang security
personnel that spiked between 2013 and 2015, PRC leaders
have sought to “stabilize” the XUAR through more
intensive security measures aimed at combatting “terrorism,
separatism and religious extremism.” According to PRC
official data, criminal arrests in Xinjiang increased by over
300% in the past five years compared to the previous five.
Two prominent Uyghurs serving life sentences for state
security crimes are Ilham Tohti (convicted in 2014), a
Uyghur economics professor who had maintained a website
related to Uyghur issues, and Gulmira Imin (convicted in
2010), who had managed a Uyghur language website and
participated in the 2009 demonstrations.
In tandem with a new national religious policy, also
referred to as “Sinicization,” XUAR authorities have
instituted measures to assimilate Uyghurs into Han Chinese
society and reduce the influences of Uyghur, Islamic, and
Arabic cultures and languages. The XUAR government
enacted a law in 2017 that prohibits “expressions of
extremification,” and placed restrictions, often imposed
arbitrarily, upon face veils, beards and other grooming,
some traditional Uyghur customs including wedding and
funeral rituals, and halal food practices. Local authorities
reportedly also have banned some Islamic names for
children. Thousands of mosques in Xinjiang reportedly
have been demolished as part of what the government calls
a “mosque rectification” campaign; others have been
“Sinicized”—minarets have been taken down, onion domes
have been replaced by traditional Chinese roofs, and
Islamic motifs and Arabic writings have been removed.
Some Uyghurs—estimates range from hundreds to
thousands—have fled religious restrictions and persecution
in China during the past decade. Many have migrated
through Southeast Asia to Turkey, which has a large
Uyghur community. In response to pressure from Beijing,
Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand repatriated nearly 150
Uyghurs to the PRC between 2009 and 2015.
By contrast, the Hui, another Muslim minority group in
China who number around 11 million, largely have
practiced their faith with less government interference. The
Hui are more geographically dispersed and culturally
assimilated than the Uyghurs, are generally physically
indistinguishable from Hans, and do not speak a nonChinese language.
Many experts attribute the proliferation and intensification
of security measures in the region to new national and
provincial counterterrorism laws and to the leadership of
Chen Quanguo, the former Party Secretary of Tibet, who
was appointed Party Secretary of the XUAR in 2016.
Recent security measures include the following:
Police Presence and Surveillance: Thousands of
“convenience” police stations, furnished with
https://crsreports.congress.gov
Uyghurs in China
antiriot and high-tech surveillance equipment,
have been installed.
Biometric data collection: Authorities have
systematically collected and cataloged DNA
samples, blood types, and fingerprints and
performed eye scans of Uyghurs for identification
purposes as part of its social stability campaign,
often under the guise of “health physicals.”
Internet and Social Media Controls: Uyghurs in
some areas of the XUAR are required to install an
application on their mobile phones that enables
authorities to monitor their online activities.
Home stays: The government has sent an
estimated one million officials and state workers
from outside the XUAR, mostly ethnic Han, to live
temporarily in the homes of Uyghurs to assess
their hosts’ loyalty to the Communist Party.
Mass Internment
According to various estimates, Xinjiang authorities have
detained over 1 million Turkic Muslims, mostly ethnic
Uyghurs, and Kazakhs, in “reeducation camps” without
formal charges, trials or hearings, and with no timetable for
release. Many detainees have little or no contact with their
families and, in some cases, young children. Some PRC
officials describe the Xinjiang camps as “vocational
education institutions” in which “trainees” learn the
Chinese language, legal knowledge, and job skills, and
undergo “de-extremizationjob skills
and study Chinese language while undergoing “deextremization.” Other PRC authorities state
that detainees
are “infected with religious extremism and
violent terrorist
ideology.” According to some reports,
many detainees had
engaged in activities that authorities
may now deem
“extremist,” including participating in
religious services
outside of officially sanctioned places of
worship; home-schoolinghomeschooling one’s children; spending time
abroad or having
relatives living abroad; and expressing
religious strong religious
sentiments.
Many detainees reportedly are compelled to express or
chant their love of the Communist Party and President Xi
Jinping, sing patriotic songs, renounce or reject many of
their religious beliefs and customs, including their
avoidance of pork, alcohol, and smoking, and undergo
ideological indoctrination and self-criticisms. According to
former detainees, treatment and conditions in the camps
include beatings, food deprivation, and crowded and
unsanitary conditions. Some reeducation centers reportedly
contain factories where detainees are forced to work, in
some cases producing goods for export.
U.S. Responses
Members of the Trump Administration have condemned
PRC forced-assimilation policies and the mass arbitrary
detention of Uyghurs, including detention of
Uyghurs have been condemned by the Trump
Administration, including by Vice President Mike Pence in
in an October 2018 speech on China policy and Secretary of
State Michael R. Pompeo in November 2018 remarks at the
U.S.-China
Diplomatic and Security Dialogue. On
December 4, 2018, the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee’s and in March 2019 upon
the release of the Department of State’s 2018 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices. On December 4, 2018,
the Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and
International Cybersecurity Policy held a hearing entitled
“The China Challenge, Part 3: Democracy, Human Rights,
and the Rule of Law,” in which the internment of Uyghurs
was prominently featuredof the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee (SFRC) held a hearing on human
rights in China, and on June 5, 2019, the SFRC held a full
committee hearing on the 30th anniversary of the
Tiananmen crackdown. In both hearings, witnesses raised
the issue of the mass internment of Uyghurs.
In January 2019, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was
introduced in the Senate and House (S. 178 and H.R. 649).
The act would mandate four U.S. agency reports on the
Uyghur human rights situation and urge the Administration
to establish a U.S. Special Coordinator for Xinjiang in the
Department of State. The act would in part call upon U.S.
law enforcement agencies to protect members of the
Uyghur diaspora in the United States from PRC
harassment. It would urge the Secretary of State to consider
imposing sanctions pursuant to the Global Magnitsky Act
(subtitle F of P.L. 114-328) upon Chinese officials
responsible for human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The
Global Magnitsky Act authorizes the President to deny
entry into the United States and freeze assets held in the
United States of foreign individuals responsible for “gross
violations of internationally recognized human rights.” The
UIGHUR Act of 2019 (H.R. 1025), introduced in February
2019, would in part call upon the Administration to engage
in international advocacy in support of Turkic Muslims in
China, promote Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur language
programming, and restrict the export of U.S. technologies
that facilitate the mass arbitrary detention of Turkic
Muslims in
China.
Terrorism
The PRC government has attributed numerous deadly
incidents in the XUAR to the East Turkestan Islamic
Movement (ETIM). Chinese officials portray ETIM as a
Uyghur terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda, the Taliban,
and the Islamic State that advocates the creation of an
independent Islamic state that would include Xinjiang. The
U.S. government designated ETIM as a terrorist
organization under Executive Order 13224 in 2002 (to
block terrorist financing) and placed ETIM on the Terrorist
Exclusion List in 2004 (to prevent the entry of terrorists
into the United States). ETIM is not on the Department of
State’s narrower “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO)
list. The U.S. government “identified sufficient evidence”
to consider three violent incidents in China purportedly
involving Uyghurs as terrorist attacks in 2014, although the
lack of information in most cases has made it difficult to
verify PRC accounts of alleged terrorist activity. According
to some experts, ETIM, whose members reportedly spent
time in Afghanistan and Pakistan from the late-1990s to the
mid-2000s, was a small, loosely organized and poorly
financed group that lacked weapons and had little if any
contact with global jihadist groups.
Roughly 100 Uyghurs from China entered Islamic State
territory during 2013-2014, according to the New America
Foundation. Over one dozen Uyghurs purportedly were
involved in terrorist activities in Thailand and Indonesia
during 2015-2016. In 2016, a car bomb exploded outside
the PRC embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, which local
authorities attributed to Uyghur militants based in Syria.
Thomas Lum,
https://crsreports.congress.gov
IF10281
Uyghurs in China
IF10281
Thomas Lum,
Disclaimer
This document was prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). CRS serves as nonpartisan shared staff to
congressional committees and Members of Congress. It operates solely at the behest of and under the direction of Congress.
Information in a CRS Report should not be relied upon for purposes other than public understanding of information that has
been provided by CRS to Members of Congress in connection with CRS’s institutional role. CRS Reports, as a work of the
United States Government, are not subject to copyright protection in the United States. Any CRS Report may be
reproduced and distributed in its entirety without permission from CRS. However, as a CRS Report may include
copyrighted images or material from a third party, you may need to obtain the permission of the copyright holder if you
wish to copy or otherwise use copyrighted material.
https://crsreports.congress.gov | IF10281 · VERSION 1416 · UPDATED