Uyghurs

China will prosecute the former editor-in-chief of the official Communist Party publication in the violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang on charges of corruption after he expressed doubt about government policies, the paper said on Nov. 2. 

Hundreds have died in the last few years in Xinjiang unrest blamed by the government on Islamist militants. 

Pakistan has eliminated all members of the Uighur militant group the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from its territory, but must remain vigilant to ensure they don't return, the country's defence minister said in Beijing on Oct. 18. 

China will maintain "heavy pressure" to defeat militants in its far western region of Xinjiang, China's fourth most senior leader said during a visit to its ethnic Uighur heartland, urging religious figures to take the lead in opposing extremism. 

At least five police officers have been stabbed to death by separatists in a knife attack at a coal mine in China's violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang, U.S.-based Radio Free Asia reported on Sept.23.

The incident happened on Sept.18 at the Sogan colliery in Aksu, the report said, citing police from the area. Dozens were also injured, it said. 

During every Ramadan, news erupts in the Turkish press claiming China is oppressing Uighur Turks in the country and banning their practice of Islam. As usual, this was again the case last month. Similar news was broadly covered in the media upon which anti-China demonstrations and attacks took place throughout Turkey. 

Yet are these claims valid? Are Uighurs tyrannized in China? 

Some of the 109 Uighurs returned to China from Thailand last month attacked Thai and Chinese police while being taken aboard a flight back to Xinjiang, as they believed they would be executed on their return, Xinjiang's government said on August 4.

Some of the Uighurs deported to China last week from Thailand had planned to go to Syria and Iraq to carry out jihad, state television said, showing pictures of them being bundled out of an aircraft with black hoods over their heads. 

Uighurs from China's Xinjiang are being given Turkish identity papers in Southeast Asia by Turkish diplomats and then taken to Turkey where some are sold to fight for groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as "cannon fodder," a senior Chinese official said. 

Many news reports on China?s alleged restrictions on Muslim Uighurs during the holy month of Ramadan do not reflect reality, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has said, amid anti-Chinese demonstrations by Turkish nationalists over the treatment of the Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim minority in China?s Xinjiang region.
 

Thailand on Friday closed its embassy and consulate in Turkey after a protest against its deportation of Uighur Muslims to China, as the US warned the minority could face "harsh treatment" on their return.