Tag: Uyghurs

China has transformed Xinjiang into a ‘mass detention camp’ – UN

September 3, 2018 China Children, China, Prisons, Religious freedom, Terrorism, Uyghurs, Xinjiang

China's government has had an "anti terror" campaign in majority-Muslim Xinjiang region - meaning increased surveillance, arrests and detention. (Photo: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)

The United Nations has raised alarm over the tens of thousands of Uyghur Muslims being held in detention centres in Xinjiang, northwest China. In a report last Thursday, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said the Chinese government had “transformed the autonomous region of the Uyghurs into . . . Read More

‘Lack of religious freedom anywhere is a threat everywhere,’ Sam Brownback tells religious freedom summit

July 25, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country China, Mike Pompeo, Religious freedom, Sam Brownback, USA, Uyghurs, Xinjiang

Christian leaders in Iran have said that pressure on Christians increases every year around Christmas but that this year it is particularly severe. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The US Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, urged government and faith leaders, and civil society, to work together to enhance global religious freedom, at the opening of the first-ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington DC yesterday (24 July). In his opening words, Brownback, who was appointed in . . . Read More

China: Xinjiang’s children in orphanages as their parents held in re-education camps

July 20, 2018 China Children, China, Religious freedom, Uyghurs, Women, Xinjiang

As a rally in support of China’s prisoners of conscience took place in the streets of Washington DC last week, an ongoing Chinese government crackdown on its Uyghur-people in Xinjiang province is tearing both Muslim and Christian families and communities apart. The rally, hosted by five rights groups in the . . . Read More

Report: China’s ‘re-education’ camps could hold over a million people

May 18, 2018 China China, Communism, Uyghurs, Xinjiang

View of Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, the ‘world’s most surveilled area’. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

“Re-education” camps in China’s far-western Xinjiang region hold hundreds of thousands of people – possibly even over a million – a new report says. The paper, published on Tuesday (15 May) by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington DC-based think-tank, said there is a “substantial body of PRC [People’s Republic of China] . . . Read More

North Korea, China, Russia and Iran ‘forces of instability’

April 24, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country Andrew Brunson, Chechnya, China, Human rights, Iran, Liberia, Mexico, Myanmar, North Korea, Rohingya, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, USA, Uyghurs, Uzbekistan, Venezuela

Tibetan Buddhists as well as Uyghur Muslims are among the minority groups that Chinese authorities are clamping down on. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The US State Department has called North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran “forces of instability” in its latest set of country reports on human rights, saying they “violate the human rights of those within their borders on a daily basis”. The 2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, published on . . . Read More

China: 100 Christians sent to ‘re-education’ camps in Xinjiang

February 2, 2018 China China, Communism, Converts, Hui, Terrorism, Uyghurs, Xinjiang

More than 100 Christians have been sent to “re-education” camps in China’s north-western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the past few months, World Watch Monitor has learned. In these camps, also known as “study centres” or “mind-transformation centres”, they are taught how to be loyal to the communist ideology. Most . . . Read More

For Chinese Muslims the cost of becoming a Christian is loneliness

January 24, 2018 China China, Converts, Hui, Uyghurs, Xinjiang

"Id Kah Mosque", the 500-year-old main mosque in Kashgar, one of the westernmost cities of China, in Xinjiang, where up to 7,000 Muslims gather every Friday for prayer. (Photo: World Watch Monitor, 2009)

For the few thousand Muslims in China who have become Christians, life is characterised by loneliness. Cast out from their families and communities, in the rural areas where most of them live it is difficult to find other Christians, especially under China’s strict religion regulations. Often Christians of Muslim background . . . Read More

Iraq and Philippines Christians join Red Wednesday religious freedom solidarity display

November 22, 2017 Bashar Warda, Belgium, China, Copts, Egypt, France, IDPs, India, Iraq, Islamic State, London, Manila, Myanmar, Nineveh Plains, Religious freedom, Rohingya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, UN, Uyghurs

Landmarks in the UK, Ireland, Iraq and the Philippines are due to be floodlit in red today (22 November) to highlight the persecution of faith groups for their “peacefully held beliefs”. The “Red Wednesday” initiative is in its second year and has been pioneered by Aid to the Church in . . . Read More

Why the Uyghurs are under pressure in Xinjiang

June 15, 2017 China Communism, Syria, Terrorism, Turkey, Uyghurs, Xinjiang

As in July 2009 the Chinese government again shows its muscles in Xinjiang province, north-west China, during an anti-terror mass rally in February, this time in the southern city of Hotan. Tensions have flared up regularly in this area where the Uyghur people struggle for self-determination.

Both Muslims and Christians in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in north-west China find themselves under increased pressure from the Chinese authorities. An anti-terror mass rally in the southern city of Hotan in February, an increase in surveillance measures in public places, and the introduction of new anti-terror policies, are all . . . Read More

Kazakh Baptists raided, fined on Easter Sunday as ‘illegal’

May 4, 2017 Kazakhstan Almaty, Astana, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Russia, Uyghurs

Police raided meetings of at least two Baptist Churches on Easter Sunday. The protestant communities draw attention because they they choose to hold their church services without seeking state registration "out of conviction".

Tammar leads a church of young Uyghurs in Kazakhstan. On Easter Sunday, as 20 of them gathered, there was a sudden police raid, including members of the anti-terrorist team. All 20 had to sign a form saying they were at this ‘illegal’ meeting, and Tammar was fined $900. At first, he wouldn’t . . . Read More

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