Xinjiang

By Chris Rickleton When Tursynbek Kabiuly arrived in Kazakhstan in February following a 17-month absence enforced by Chinese authorities, he could see the joy on his wife Oralkhan’s face. But unless she spoke loudly, he could hardly…

SHAYAR, CHINA – China is destroying burial grounds where generations of Uighur families have been laid to rest, leaving behind human bones and broken tombs in what activists call an effort to eradicate the ethnic group’s identity…

WASHINGTON/BEIJING – The Trump administration on Tuesday slapped travel bans on Chinese officials involved in a massive crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in its west.The State Department said it would not issue visas…

BRUSSELS – A Uighur refugee living in Belgium complained Tuesday that Chinese authorities had cracked down on his family after they applied for the right to join him.Abdulhamid Tursun’s case has raised controversy in Belgium, where…

by Jasmine Leung and Yan Zhao From doing homework by torchlight to hurling flaming molotov cocktails at riot police: the character of Hong Kong’s protests has changed dramatically in five years, with young demonstrators hardened by the…

UNITED NATIONS – U.S. President Donald Trump called for an end to religious persecution on Monday at a U.S. event on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations that featured a woman whose Uighur…

ISTANBUL - A decade after deadly riots tore through his hometown, Kamilane Abudushalamu still vividly recalls the violence that left him an exile.On July 5, 2009, Abudushalamu was hiding with his father on the 10th floor of an…

A prominent political activist for China’s Uighur ethnic minority, Rebiya Kadeer, will be allowed into Japan during this week’s Group of 20 leaders’ summit, her supporters have said.Japanese government sources confirmed Tokyo has…

BEIJING - Belgium says it is working toward providing visas to a Uighur family that went missing after being escorted out of its embassy in Beijing last week under murky circumstances.The woman and her four children disappeared for…

China has opened up its Xinjiang “re-education” camps to the Western media, allowing journalists to film inside and speak to workers and detainees for the first time.The workers deny the camps are prison-like, saying all attendees are…

BEIJING - A Belgian diplomat was expected to travel to China’s restive Xinjiang region on Tuesday to confirm the whereabouts of a Uighur family that was escorted from Belgium’s embassy in Beijing by police last month.The…

BEIJING - The U.S. government expressed deep concerns to the U.N. about a reported trip by the U.N. counterterrorism chief to the restive Xinjiang region in China’s far west.Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, in a phone call…

by Elaine Yu Hong Kong’s tech-savvy protesters are going digitally dark as they try to avoid surveillance and potential future prosecutions, disabling location tracking on their phones, buying train tickets with cash and purging their…

The corner where Heyitkah mosque in China's far western region of Xinjiang once hummed with life is now a car park where all traces of the tall, domed building have been erased. While Muslims around the world celebrated the end of…

BEIJING - China’s fractious far-west region of Xinjiang has changed its university entrance exam rules to give children from mixed families a leg-up on other students, in what experts say are the latest efforts to erase a mostly…

By Elaine Yu Chinese authorities are using a mobile app designed for mass surveillance to profile, investigate and detain Muslims in Xinjiang by labelling “completely lawful” behaviour as suspicious, a Human Rights Watch report said…

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres raised the plight of ethnic Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang region during talks with Chinese leaders and stressed that China must fully respect human rights, his spokesman said Monday. Guterres faced…

by Christopher Rickleton with in Laurent Thomet Beijing and Gohar Abbas in Islamabad Traders travel freely through the bustling Khorgos special economic zone that straddles the Kazakhstan-China border, but signs on the Chinese side bear…

WASHINGTON - A fleet of U.S.-made satellites helps China’s government police its people and supports its military despite growing wariness in Washington over Beijing’s power, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.While the…

BEIJING - At the Shu Le County Education Center, a sprawling three-story complex in China’s far-west region of Xinjiang, the dormitories feature bars on windows and doors that only lock from the outside.Inside are hundreds of…