China renames hundreds of villages in Xinjiang to scrub away Uyghur identity: Human Rights Watch
Singapore: China has renamed at least 630 villages in Xinjiang, erasing references to Uyghur culture in what human rights advocates say is a systematic propaganda rebrand designed to stamp out the Muslim minority group’s identity.
In a research brief released by Human Rights Watch on Wednesday, the organisation said it had identified a mass renaming process by Chinese authorities in the country’s north-western region, with “Happiness,” “Unity,” and “Harmony” among the most common replacement names for villages.
Uyghur protesters hold placards outside the Adelaide Zoo earlier this week during Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s four-day visit to Australia. Credit: Getty Images
The renaming involved deleting references to religion, Uyghur history and cultural practices.
The report found, for example, that since 2009 all but six of the 47 villages in Xinjiang with the word mazar (shrine) in their names had been renamed by 2023, while 25 of the 28 villages that had a reference to Hoja (religious teacher) in 2016 had been renamed.
“This is part of a broader effort to really scrub Uyghur identity. We’ve seen numerous measures by the Chinese government to do this, but changing the names of villages, particularly those with religious or Islamic significance, has a huge bearing on people,” said Elaine Pearson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division.
The Chinese embassy in Australia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. During Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s four-day visit to Australia this week, protesters in Adelaide and Canberra drew attention to human rights violations in Xinjiang, where up to 1 million Uyghurs were reportedly detained in re-education camps.
Human Rights Watch identified the mass renaming of villages by scraping the website of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, which publishes lists of villages.
In co-operation with Norway-based organisation Uyghur Hjelp, HRW uncovered more than 3600 village names changes since 2009, most of which were mundane.
However, using an algorithm to compare Uyghur language with Chinese translations, the researchers identified 630 changes that “remove a religious, historical, or Uyghur cultural terms and replace it with a name that is generic or one that fits the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology”.
They found that most of the renaming occurred between 2017 and 2019, when China’s crackdown on Uyghurs intensified, and predominantly occurred in the Kashgar, Aksu and Hotan prefectures in southern Xinjiang, home to large populations of the Muslim ethnic group.
These included the renaming of Aq Meschit, meaning “White Mosque” village, in Akto County, to Unity in 2018. In Karakax County, Dutar village, named after a Uyghur musical instrument, was renamed Red Flag in 2022, the report said.
Uyghur World Congress spokesperson Zumretay Arkin, who grew up Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi before moving to Canada, said the report’s findings aligned with other measures used by the Chinese government to assimilate the minority group, including education programs aimed at changing traditional Uyghur food culture and halal preparations.
“It is not a surprise,” she said of the village name changes. “They’re really targeting every level of our identity and our cultural heritage”.
China has repeatedly denied committing human rights abuses in Xinjiang. In addition to mass incarceration, media investigations and research reports have levelled claims of Uyghur persecution by China through forced labour, forced sterilisation and torture.
A United Nations report in 2022 found that “serious human rights violations have been committed” in Xinjiang “in the context of the government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-‘extremism’ strategies”. It said these included possible crimes against humanity.
In a rare visit to Xinjiang last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged local officials to further encourage assimilation of Muslims, telling them: “We must further promote the Sinicisation of Islam and effectively control all kinds of illegal religious activities.”
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.