Uyghur Times Under Cyberattack: Chinese Hackers Target Independent Uyghur Media

Uyghur Times reports repeated hacking and page deactivations in an apparent campaign to silence reporting on Uyghur human rights and diaspora issues

Unauthorized users and IP addresses have been manipulating our accounts and repeatedly deactivating our pages for the past three months. Unknown and unauthorized attackers hacked the Uyghur Times Facebook account and deactivated it.

Uyghur Times has been actively reporting on Uyghur human rights, cultural life, the diaspora, and the international response to the Uyghur human rights crisis. These attacks are not the work of ordinary individuals. They serve only one interest: the Chinese government, which is responsible for these atrocities and is afraid of being exposed.

This is not the first time Chinese hackers have targeted Uyghur Times. It is part of an ongoing campaign of cyberattacks against our network since its founding in 2018, as we have previously reported. We have been monitoring and tracking these attacks and have identified the likely source as a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group.

We report these illegal activities to U.S. law enforcement and to the security departments of social media companies. At the same time, we are committed to exposing the identity of the attackers to the public and taking all necessary legal and technical measures to protect our right to continue our work and to expose the human rights violations committed by the Chinese Communist Party.