China bulldozes graveyards of minority Muslim Uighurs

EVEN in death there is no respite for the Uighurs, one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, according to an investigation that has revealed China has been destroying burial grounds where generations of families have been interred.

Over the past two years, tombs have been smashed and human bones scattered in dozens of desecrated cemeteries in north-west China, research by Agence France Presse and satellite imagery analysts Earthrise Alliance has revealed.

While the official explanation for the policy is urban development or the “standardisation” of old graves, Uighurs living overseas say the destruction is part of the state’s concerted effort to eradicate their ethnic identity and control every aspect of their lives.

“This is all part of China’s campaign to effectively eradicate any evidence of who we are, to effectively make us like the Han Chinese,” said Salih Hudayar, who added that the graveyard where his great-grandparents were buried had been demolished.

“That’s why they’re destroying all of these historical sites, these cemeteries, to disconnect us from our history, from our fathers and our ancestors,” he said. An estimated one million mostly Muslim ethnic minorities have been rounded up into re-education camps in Xinjiang in the name of battling religious extremism and separatism.

Beijing has long sought to control the resource-rich region of Xinjiang, where decades of government encouraged migration of the Han – China’s ethnic majority – have fuelled resentment among Uighurs.

Last year, Uighur exile groups reported that the Chinese authorities were setting up “burial management centres” in an effort to exert control over the most private aspects of their lives.

The latest investigation claims that the destruction of existing graveyards has been carried out with little respect for the dead.

AFP journalists said they had found human bones discarded at three sites and other sites where tombs had been reduced to mounds of bricks.

Satellite imagery analysed by AFP and Earthrise Alliance shows that the Chinese government has, since 2014, exhumed and flattened at least 45 Uighur cemeteries – including 30 in the past two years.

The Xinjiang government has not responded to requests for comment.