By Juliana Rincon Parra
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
Courtesy Of Global Voices
Today we take a look at the situation faced by the Uyghur people, a Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region of China, where their culture is being obliterated by the central Chinese government, first because they were deemed separatists and now, after the September 11 attacks to the USA, also as terrorists.
Image by http://futureatlas.com
Facing many of the same problems Tibetans have due to their religious views such as religious restrictions, forced abortions, imprisonment and execution, the Uyghurs' (also spelled as Uygur, Uigur, Uighur) plight isn't as visible to westerners as the Buddhist's situation. In past Global Voices articles we've followed up on their situation including on how their online forums were closed by the Chinese government back in 2008, and also how the Chinese government pressures other countries to refuse asylum to those they deem criminals, much in the same way it happened with 17 Uyghur detainees in Guantanamo, who had been released but China pressured countries not to accept them.
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is also controversially known as Uyghurstan or East Turkistan, and this following video is brought to us by the Saving East Turkistan project where they point out that due to the religious persecution including forced abortions passed of as family planning and the many deaths due to nuclear testing it may be possible that the Uyghur culture will die off:
Now, the documentary video about the Uyghurs by the Stanley Foundation, where compounding the decreased numbers of Uyghurs, they have restrictions in how they can raise their children, making it virtually impossible for them to pass on their religious traditions to their offspring, creating what they call a cultural genocide:
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