‘In Xinjiang, a growing number of reports confirm mass detention of Hui citizens.’
Gene A. Bunin is a writer and translator currently based in Almaty, Kazakhstan, who has been researching the Uyghur language since 2008. In Foreign Policy, he writes (porous paywall) that there is growing evidence that members of the Hui minority are being swept up into China’s internment camp system for Muslims, along with Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz.
Hui people, in contrast to Uyghurs, while maintaining their identity as Muslims, have traditionally been “much closer to the country’s majority ethnic Han, in language, culture, and often even appearance… This fact, together with the very low number of reported Hui victims, has led to a belief that the group has mostly avoided the recent repressions, with scholars both from Xinjiang and from outside at times echoing this opinion.”
However, a “growing number of eyewitness accounts and testimonies, at times backed up by supplementary evidence, now suggest the opposite.”
As with Uyghurs, “some of the earliest indications of arrests and disappearances have stemmed from overseas students and recent graduates, who were born in the region but later went abroad to study and, in some cases, stayed to work.” Other stories have come to light via online sources and news media reports.
Read the whole thing (porous paywall) for details on the body of evidence that Bunin cites to make his case.
—Jeremy Goldkorn
