China has changed the names of hundreds of villages in Xinjiang region in a move aimed at erasing Uyghur Muslim culture, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.According to a report by the group, hundreds of villages in Xinjiang with names related to the religion, history or culture of Uyghurs were replaced between 2009 and 2023.Words such as “sultan” and “shrine” are disappearing from place names – to be replaced with terms such as “harmony” and “happiness”, according to the research, which is based on China’s own published data.China’s embassy in London denied the allegations.In recent years, Chinese authorities have been radically overhauling society in Xinjiang in an attempt to assimilate its minority Uyghur population into mainstream Chinese culture.Researchers from HRW and Norway-based organisation Uyghur Hjelp studied the names of villages in Xinjiang from the website of the National Bureau of Statistics of China over the 14-year period.They found the names of 3,600 of the 25,000 villages in Xinjiang were changed during this time.While the majority of these name changes “appear mundane”, HRW said, around one fifth – or 630 changes – remove references to Uyghur religion, culture or history.Words freighted with meaning for China’s Uyghur population – including Hoja, a title for a Sufi religious teacher, and political or honorific titles such as Sultan and beg – have been replaced with words HRW claims reflect “recent Chinese Communist Party ideology”, including “harmony” and “happiness”. In one example highlighted by the report, Aq Meschit (“white mosque”) in Akto County, a village in the southwest of Xinjiang, was renamed Unity village in 2018. A growing body of evidence points …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnChina has changed the names of hundreds of villages in Xinjiang region in a move aimed at erasing Uyghur Muslim culture, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.According to a report by the group, hundreds of villages in Xinjiang with names related to the religion, history or culture of Uyghurs were replaced between 2009 and 2023.Words such as “sultan” and “shrine” are disappearing from place names – to be replaced with terms such as “harmony” and “happiness”, according to the research, which is based on China’s own published data.China’s embassy in London denied the allegations.In recent years, Chinese authorities have been radically overhauling society in Xinjiang in an attempt to assimilate its minority Uyghur population into mainstream Chinese culture.Researchers from HRW and Norway-based organisation Uyghur Hjelp studied the names of villages in Xinjiang from the website of the National Bureau of Statistics of China over the 14-year period.They found the names of 3,600 of the 25,000 villages in Xinjiang were changed during this time.While the majority of these name changes “appear mundane”, HRW said, around one fifth – or 630 changes – remove references to Uyghur religion, culture or history.Words freighted with meaning for China’s Uyghur population – including Hoja, a title for a Sufi religious teacher, and political or honorific titles such as Sultan and beg – have been replaced with words HRW claims reflect “recent Chinese Communist Party ideology”, including “harmony” and “happiness”. In one example highlighted by the report, Aq Meschit (“white mosque”) in Akto County, a village in the southwest of Xinjiang, was renamed Unity village in 2018. A growing body of evidence points …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
