Where is xinjiang uygur at in china

There is also evidence that Uyghurs are being used as forced labour and of women being forcibly sterilised. Some former camp detainees have also alleged they were tortured and sexually abused. The US is among several countries to have accused China of committing genocide in Xinjiang. The leading human rights groups Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have published reports accusing China of crimes against humanity. China denies all allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, claiming its system of "re-education" camps are there to combat separatism and Islamist militancy in the region.

The Uyghurs speak their own language, which is similar to Turkish, and see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. They make up less than half of the Xinjiang population. Recent decades have seen a mass migration of Han Chinese China's ethnic majority into Xinjiang, allegedly orchestrated by the state to dilute the minority population there.

China has also been accused of targeting Muslim religious figures and banning religious practices in the region, as well as destroying mosques and tombs. Uyghur activists say they fear that the group's culture is under threat of erasure.

More on this story. Xinjiang lies in the north-west of China and is the country's largest region. Like Tibet, it is autonomous, meaning - in theory - it has some powers of self-governance. But in practice, both regions are subjected to major restrictions by the central government.

Xinjiang is a mostly desert region and produces about a fifth of the world's cotton. Human rights groups have voiced concerns that much of that cotton export is picked by forced labour, and in some Western brands removed Xinjiang cotton from their supply chains, leading to a backlash against the brands from Chinese celebrities and netizens. In December , research seen by the BBC showed that up to half a million people were being forced to pick cotton in Xinjiang.

There is evidence that new factories have been built within the grounds of the re-education camps. The region is also rich in oil and natural gas and because of its proximity to Central Asia and Europe is seen by Beijing as an important trade link. In the early 20th Century, the Uyghurs briefly declared independence for the region but it was brought under the complete control of China's new Communist government in Several countries, including the US, Canada and the Netherlands, have accused China of committing genocide - defined by international convention as the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

The declarations follow reports that, as well as interning Uyghurs in camps, China has been forcibly mass sterilising Uyghur women to suppress the population, separating children from their families, and attempting to break the cultural traditions of the group. However, these encouraging macro-economic figures hide pronounced inequalities that apply along ethnic lines. To Uyghur eyes, the investments are directed first towards the areas of colonisation 18 , and have benefited the Han colonists most of all.

Thus, the per capita GDP in Han areas is far higher than that in areas where the Uyghurs are still in the majority see Table 2. However the partial withdrawal of the state from financing the education system has led to an increase in schooling costs and falling numbers of scholarships. The poorest families do not have the means to provide a full education for their children; and they have to restrict their years at school. The national minorities in Xinjiang are over-represented at the bottom of the socio-professional scale and the Han are over-represented at the top.

According to the census, the infant mortality rate among the national minorities in Xinjiang was 3. At the same time, unemployment among young Uyghurs has led to higher crime rates and drug-taking—though these are culturally alien to this Muslim society.

Poverty, and also the inequalities mentioned above, give Uyghurs the sense that they are excluded from economic growth to the benefit of the Han. Even though this kind of approach does not explain all the factors and paradigms entering the equation in the birth and the growing influence of nationalism in Xinjiang since the start of the twentieth century, it does help us to see how such inequalities have favoured the strengthening of Uyghur nationalism over the past twenty years.

Indeed, going beyond cultural identity, socio-economic and political stratification in Xinjiang has brought many Uyghurs to view themselves as a lower-grade community, separate from the central community that is to say, the Han that dominates the economic and political systems.

To that extent, it has favoured the emergence of anti-colonial nationalism 24 , fuelled by the distinctive identity of the Uyghurs to legitimise the establishment of real self-government which would at last serve the interests of the Uyghurs—and not those exclusively of Peking and the Han.

It is true that the Chinese regime does attempt to co-opt a proportion of the Uyghurs into the administration but, even though noteworthy efforts have been made since the s, it seems that over these last decades they have not been enough to integrate all the new Uyghur elite inside the system.

In the s, because of the small number of Uyghurs who had been educated, it was relatively easy for them to find posts on a level with their expectations.

Thus, many young Uyghurs of working-class or middle-class origins reproach the Chinese regime for not providing them with job opportunities commensurate with their training and, instead, for favouring the appointment of Han to management posts For example, in , the national minorities provided only This state of affairs is also observable within the political system: officials drawn from the national minorities are still under-represented in the Xinjiang Communist Party.

They accounted for only Moreover, bearing in mind that their loyalty towards Peking is considered suspect, they are often held down in posts with little power or posts where they can easily be controlled.

And the most important CCP posts in Xinjiang are held by Han loyal to Peking and not by members of national minorities. For example, it is revealing to note that, ever since , the post of Secretary of the CCP in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has been occupied in an almost systematic way by Han Chinese.

Shifting this fault line, where the integration of Uyghur elites is concerned, acts as a kind of measuring instrument for Uyghur nationalism. Today, the fact that poorly integrated elite Uyghurs are more numerous than before explains the rising discontent among young educated people and the strengthening of their political opposition. This phenomenon in its many forms manifests itself, for example, in the proliferation of books and academic research into Uyghur history and culture.

It has also taken the form, as among the Hui, of an Islamic revival While publications relating to Islam flourished, mosques were renovated and many new ones built. Similarly, religious education developed strongly: Koranic schools were opened, attached to mosques on the one hand or, on the other, as private schools—usually undeclared This Islamic revival, observed right across China, has nevertheless assumed a distinctive dimension among the Uyghurs.

For them it is part of a logic of return or perceived return to practices formerly discouraged or repressed, but it is also at the margin part of a more militant logic using Islam as an instrument for distinguishing Uyghur values 31 from the non-clerical and atheistic values promoted by the Chinese authorities.

Table 1 : Demographic strength of the main Xinjiang nationalities. Source: Fenjin de sishi nian: Xinjiang fenci The advancing 40 years. Xinjiang Volume , Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, Urumchi, , p. This is conveyed in a report reflecting CCP anxiety:. This is a new phenomena. Uyghur students from seven universities and colleges including Xinjiang University in Urumqi demonstrated on December 12 th They were openly against the Central Government's decision.

In June , another demonstration was organized by a student association in Xinjiang University. At the start of the s, young Uyghurs of the region of Ghulja Yining launched a movement to re-invigorate these gatherings which have spread rapidly. Uyghur militancy is driven mostly by a fringe group of young students and intellectuals, purged regularly by Chinese repression.

Up until the s, two successive clandestine groups in the tradition of the pre oppositional currents, both quite durable, dominated the underground political scene.

Of these two nationalist Pan-Turkist parties, one, socialist and secular, relied on Soviet aid, and the other came from the anti-communist and Islamic tradition centred on the south of Xinjiang. Both could call upon a base of militancy that was relatively wide compared with present-day groupings see below. At the same time they were counting on significant underground mobilisation to prepare for a general uprising in Xinjiang.

Mainly drawing in Uyghurs but also Kazakhs, it was founded in secret, according to the Chinese authorities, in February ; but, according to the militants who have now taken refuge abroad, some of its cells had already been active for several years beforehand This was a separatist Pan-Turkist party with Marxist allegiances.

Well-structured and hierarchic, it swiftly recruited former officials of the East Turkistan Republic as well as young people from Turkic-speaking minorities. According to the East Turkistan National Centre, this party numbered more than 60, members and branches in Xinjiang These figures are hard to verify. However, the ETPP is probably the largest secret organisation ever created since the liberation of Xinjiang.

The rise to power of this underground party seems to have been favoured mainly by the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and by the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations.

As is confirmed by Chinese sources and the testimony of some of its former militants, the KGB developed its links with this party mostly through its agents active in Kazakhstan and seems to have provided it with logistical support on several occasions:. The Soviet Spy agency sent a group of fourteen people with spies carrying radio transmitters, weapons and funds for their activities.

Table 2 : Distribution of wealth in the main sub-regional administrative units in Xinjiang. Source: Xinjiang tongji nianjian, op. At the same time, it took up guerrilla activities sabotage, skirmishes with the police and the Chinese army… and was behind various attempts at insurrection during the s and the s.

Still quite active during the s, it was gradually weakened by the arrest of its leaders, by the gradual falling away of Soviet support as the tension between Moscow and Peking relaxed, and then by the decline of the communist ideology. Nevertheless, while the ETPP was in decline, a new party of anti-Marxist opposition was developing in southern Xinjiang.

This Pan-Turkic nationalist movement also aimed at renewing Islam among the Uyghurs and developed from networks of mosques in southern Xinjiang during the s. According to official sources, it apparently generated offshoots in numerous cities in the Tarim Basin, indeed as far as Ghulja Yining , Turfan and Urumqi The rising took the form of a jihad recalling that which led to the creation of the Turk Islamic Republic of East Turkistan Because of the little information available about this organisation, such links are difficult to check and to determine as true or false.

However, the slogans proclaimed during the insurrection suggest that the ETIP at this time was more a renovated form of the Islamic Pan-Turkism historically established in the south of Xinjiang than a pure reincarnation of radical Islam:. The s increase in repression is generally linked with exacerbated Party anxieties on several levels. It considers that an authoritarian crackdown is essential to ensure the survival of the regime.

At the same time, at the start of the s, the Chinese regime feared that the accession to independence of the Central Asian Republics, and also the spread of radical Islam in the region see below , would seriously destabilise Xinjiang if nothing was done.

On the one hand, the accession to independence of other large Turkic populations of Central Asia was likely to legitimise and strengthen Uyghur separatism. On the other, the cultural links that bind the Uyghurs together with the peoples of the new Republics, and also with the Uyghur Diaspora in these countries 46 , allowed Peking to fear that solidarity would build up between the Uyghur separatists and these states or certain organisations present on their soil.

Firstly, some of them Kazakhstan and Kirghizstan in particular have effectively offered asylum to the new refugees, and even recognised organisations of the local Diaspora defending the independence of East Turkistan. Peking then applied itself to cutting off the militants active in Xinjiang from these potential supports outside. By playing on the prospects for settling frontier disputes and for economic co-operation, and by promoting co-operation in the struggle against separatism and Islamism in Central Asia through the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation SCO 47 , China persuaded the Central Asian republics to ban the Uyghur organisations present on their territories, and even today to extradite some militants who have recently taken refuge there This campaign began shortly after a special meeting in March on maintaining stability in Xinjiang, and so there it assumed a special dimension, being targeted at separatism and illegal religious activities.

The Permanent Committee of the Politburo of the CCP then issued an exhaustive list of strict directives aimed at tightening control over Xinjiang and eradicating potentially subversive activities This intense campaign of repression led to thousands of arrests and also to constant human rights violations and the improper use of the death penalty By fencing off, even closing down, the last spaces for the expression of identity or religion 52 , these restrictions put relations between Uyghur society and the Chinese regime under considerable strain.

Local politicians, in thrall to Peking, are unable to challenge policies imposed from the centre and often very strongly disliked nuclear tests on the Lop Nor site, the restriction of religious freedoms, the enforcement of birth control while colonists are flooding in… ; this fact has provoked numerous protest movements. Faced with a strained social and political climate, the local authorities who cannot challenge the policies dictated by Peking have often reacted with brutality.

It is a region with the largest land area of all the provinces and autonomous regions in China. It possesses Its total area of grassland ranks second in China. There are over big and small rivers. The amount of water per capita is higher than the national average. There are many preserved rare and precious types and genera. Economy The gross domestic product GDP of Xinjiang in was billion Yuan , the total value of industrial and agricultural products There are bumper harvests in agriculture and rapid increases in industrial production.

Investment, consumption and exports have maintained a certain degree of increase. The financial and monetary situation is regular.