Persecution of Uyghurs in China
ongoing persecution of ethnic and religious minorities in northwestern China under Xi Jinping's administration
Since 2014, the government of the People's Republic of China has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. There have been reports of mass arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, family separation, forced labor, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights.
In 2014, the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping launched the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism, which involved surveillance and restrictions in Xinjiang. Beginning in 2017, under Xinjiang Party secretary Chen Quanguo, the government incarcerated over an estimated one million Uyghurs without legal process in internment camps officially described as "vocational education and training centers", in the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II. China began to wind down the camps in 2019, and some detainees were transferred to the penal system, while others were transferred to forced labor and factory work programs.
In addition to mass detention, government policies have included suppression of Uyghur religious practices, political indoctrination, forced sterilization, forced contraception, and forced abortion. An estimated 16,000 mosques have been razed or damaged, and hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools. Since 2017, preferential family planning exemptions previously available to Uyghurs have reportedly been reduced or removed. Chinese government statistics reported that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60%. In the same period, the national birth rate decreased by 9.7%. According to CNN, Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Persecution of Uyghurs in China” as ongoing persecution of ethnic and religious minorities in northwestern China under Xi Jinping's administration. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as ongoing persecution of ethnic and religious minorities in northwestern China under Xi Jinping's administration. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q85754778. Authority coordinates are 43.825, 87.614. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2014, 2017, 2019 and 2015.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Persecution of Uyghurs in China”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Persecution of Uyghurs in China primary sources, Persecution of Uyghurs in China archive and Persecution research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Persecution of Uyghurs in China”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Persecution of Uyghurs in China” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.