Hundreds of thousands of Uighur female religious leaders are estimated to have been arrested and imprisoned in Xinjiang since 2014, with some elderly women detained for practices that took place decades ago, according to an analysis of leaked Chinese police files.
There is growing evidence of the abusive treatment of the Uighur Muslim population of the north-west Chinese region of Xinjiang, with their traditions and religion seen as evidence of extremism and separatism.
New analysis of leaked police files found more than 400 women — some more than 80 years old — were sentenced by Chinese police for wearing religious clothing and acquiring or spreading religious knowledge. Most were sentenced for studying the Koran, said researchers from the US-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, who used analysis of the files to extrapolate that hundreds of thousands of women were likely to have been detained, in total.
Photo: AFP
In 2017, Patihan Imin, 70, was sentenced to six years in prison. Her “crimes” included studying the Koran between April and May 1967, wearing conservative religious dress between 2005 and 2014 and keeping an electronic Koran reader at home.
Another woman, Ezizgul Memet, was charged with illegally studying scripture with her mother for three days “in or around” February 1976, when she was just five or six years old. She was detained on 6 July 2017 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The police files were initially published in 2022 by several media outlets, including the BBC, but this is the first time the treatment of Uighur female religious leaders has been analyzed by researchers. Previous testimony from women confined in camps in Xinjiang revealed they have allegedly been subjected to forced sterilization, abortion, sexual assault and marriage by the Chinese government.
Other charges included wearing “illegal religious clothing”, purchasing or keeping religious books at home, attending “illegal religious gatherings,” and even organizing a wedding without music — which is officially seen as a sign of religious extremism, the report said.
The longest recorded sentence was given to Aytila Rozi, 35, who received 20 years for learning to read the Koran while working in inner China in 2007, as well as teaching and studying the Koran with a small group of women between 2009 and 2011.
In China, state narratives have portrayed Uighur women who acted as religious figures in the community as “dupes of religious extremism,” but researchers say religion is an important vehicle for female agency and expression in Uighur communities.
Rachel Harris, professor of ethnomusicology at Soas University of London and co-author of the new report, said the ustaz (urban female leaders who embraced reformist styles of Islam coming from the Middle East in the 1980s) used religion to pursue education and participate in international trade. Meanwhile, the buwi (female religious leaders primarily in rural Uighur communities) held significant power in society, and were responsible for leading birth and death rituals, teaching children and overseeing women’s religious and cultural activities.
“The government narrative was that women needed to be liberated from religious oppression. They really took that [agency] away in the name of liberating women,” said Harris.
While the ustaz still play a prominent role among the Uyghur diaspora, few buwi traditions have survived, said Harris.
“The culture of the buwi, including their poetry and songs and religious gatherings, that’s been repressed and suppressed,” she said.
The report comes as the UK, US and other countries condemned Beijing’s treatment of Uighur in a rare scrutiny of the country’s human rights record at the UN last week. The UK called on Beijing to “cease the persecution and arbitrary detention of Uighur and Tibetans and allow genuine freedom of religion or belief and cultural expression.”
In response, China’s UN ambassador Chen Xu (陳旭) said the concerns were caused by “misunderstanding or misinformation,” and that “a few countries groundlessly accuse and smear China, based not on facts but on ideological bias and unfounded rumors and lies.”
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
RSS