China’s New “Immigration Affairs Service Center” in Urumqi: A Smokescreen for Ongoing Genocide

By Tahir Imin

Oct 24, 2025

China’s New “Immigration Affairs Service Center” in Urumqi: A Smokescreen for Ongoing Genocide

Urumqi,— The Chinese government has announced the opening of its first “Immigration Affairs Service Center” (also referred to as the Foreign Experts Service Center) in Urumqi, presenting it as a key step in enhancing “Xinjiang’s” international engagement and openness.

According to People’s Daily coverage (including a photo captioned from October 21 showing an Egyptian individual using an ATM at the facility), the center offers services tailored to foreign experts and visitors, such as entry-exit procedures, policy consultations, currency exchange, and promoted cultural exchange programs.

Uyghur rights advocates and observers express serious concerns that this facility serves primarily as a tool to tightly control and shape international perceptions of the region amid ongoing repression. Independent access to East Turkistan remains heavily restricted, with journalists, human rights monitors, and independent researchers largely barred from unrestricted entry, investigations, or direct, unmonitored contact with local Uyghur communities.

The previous patters of such foreign engagement shows that the focus on “foreign experts”—typically vetted individuals such as pro-Beijing academics, business representatives, or tour participants—further suggests selective, orchestrated engagement. Such visitors often follow curated itineraries with staged interactions, avoiding sensitive areas and preventing spontaneous conversations with locals, in what critics describe as “genocide tourism.”

This initiative aligns with Beijing’s broader strategy to counter international criticism of its policies toward Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples, including through state media promotion of sanitized narratives, digital disinformation, and efforts to normalize the situation following years of reports on mass detentions, forced assimilation, and other serious human rights abuses.

The announcement underscores a glaring disparity: facilitated services for select foreigners contrasted with the persistent isolation and control imposed on the local Uyghur population.