Chinese regime launches ethnic identity change policy in Uighur homeland

Uighur Times

Tahir Imin Uighurian

May 10, 2019

The police in the Uighur homeland (XUAR) started to ask residents to change their ethnic identity on the police record, according to an advertisement posted in a Wechat (a Chinese social media app) group called “Xinjiang group for lost people”.

The post said,:”with this application developed by Xinjiang Public security department you can handle formalities of registering ID, temporary residence proof, household registration, change residency address, change ID names , change ethnic identity, deleting household”.

There has been overwhelming evidence and credible reports regarding the Chinese government’s abuses in conducting systematic mass detention, extrajudicial imprisonment and pervasive use of torture in East Turkestan (also known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by China). There are up to three million people, of Uyghur and other Turkic nationalities, that are currently detained in so called “re-education camps”. While the Chinese government claims that they are vocational training centers, they more accurately resemble concentration camps. According to witnesses Gulbahar Jelilova, a Kazakhstan citizen, and Mihrigul Tursun, a Uighur with an Egyptian citizenship, both of whom were released from these camps, people are being tortured and killed inside the camps.