Erkin Tuniyaz’s visit is no longer going ahead, but Britain should never have engaged with this whitewashing of the treatment of Uyghurs and other minorities
The oppression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic and Islamic minority people in China’s Xinjiang region has come into stark focus over the past five years.
First, minorities were interned in “re-education facilities” for indeterminate periods. Then came evidence of Chinese “minders” being sent to live with Uyghur families and report on their behaviour, of checkpoints on pedestrian streets, face-scanning cameras, the enforced installation of state spyware on personal phones, forced controls on fertility and the closing or demolition of mosques and other religious sites. Throughout all this, a man named Erkin Tuniyaz has been a leading official in Xinjiang’s regional government, and an enthusiastic defender of this “Sinicisation” of Islam. Since 2021, he has been the formal leader of the entire region.
Dr James McMurray is a research associate in anthropology and a member of the Asia Centre at the University of Sussex
