Who are the Uyghur people and why do they face oppression by China?
China has been accused of oppressing and breaching the human rights of the Uyghur people in its western Xinjiang province.
There have been widespread reports of Uyghur people being held against their will in “re-education” centres, undergoing forced contraception and being subjected to a range of other restrictions.
China says the claims are “baseless” and have repeatedly denied any mistreatment of Uyghurs, saying they live in “peace and harmony”.
But who are the Uyghurs – pronounced “wee-gers” – and why might the Chinese state allegedly be targeting them?
Uyghurs are predominantly Muslim
Who are the Uyghur people?
The Uyghurs are a group of people who live mostly in the Xinjiang area of China.
They have been living there for at least several hundred years and there is good evidence that they may have lived there in some form for several thousand years.
They are generally regarded as a Turkic people, which means they speak a language related to Turkish and have ancestors who came from the traditional homeland of the Turks – north of central Asia.
But studies of their genetic make-up suggest that they also have ancestors who came from other parts of the world, with European DNA mixed with Chinese, south Asian, Siberian, and central Asian.
There are reports Uyghur people are being held in ‘re-education’ centres
What have the Chinese been accused of?
China has been accused of interning one million Uyghurs in “re-education” centres in Xinjiang.
In 2019, leaked documents emerged that contradicted Chinese government claims that the detention camps were voluntary job training centres.
The classified papers appeared to confirm what former detainees had been saying, that the camps were centres for forced ideological and behavioural re-education, or brainwashing.
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Drone video of alleged Uyghur prisoners
The Chinese government has been accused of forcing Uyghur women and member of other minorities to take part in birth control as part of a campaign to curb its Muslim population.
Footage has emerged over the last few years purporting to show hundreds of blindfolded and shackled prisoners – who were thought to be from the Uyghur population – being marched by guards in the Xinjiang city of Korla.
Sky News has also found evidence of children of exiled Uyghurs going missing in Xinjiang.
Protesters hold flags in support of the Uyghurs in Hong Kong
Why might the Chinese oppress the Uyghurs?
Xinjiang, where an estimated 80% of China’s Uyghurs are said to live, is China’s most western province.
It is a politically sensitive region – surrounded by eight other countries.
As the home of a significant proportion of the Silk Road, it has long been used as a thoroughfare along which goods from China have travelled.
Some, possibly most, Uyghurs do not accept that Xinjiang is part of China, citing the evidence that Uyghur people lived in the area before Chinese Han and Tang dynasties set up protectorates.
Xinjiang, as it is now, came under Chinese Qing dynasty rule in the 18th century, but there have been many times in its history when it was not under Chinese control.
In modern times, China has been increasing the number of non-Uyghurs in Xinjiang, so the proportion of Uyghurs in the region is declining.
Some Uyghurs resent that they are becoming, in their view, increasingly marginalised in the land where they have lived for centuries.
Uyghurs are a Turkic people, which means they speak a language related to Turkish
What unites the Uyghur people?
The Uyghurs are predominantly Muslim and have been for at least several hundred years.
But they have a rich and complex cultural history, stretching back millennia, with archaeological sites in Xinjiang showing that many in the past adhered to Buddhist beliefs, as well as those of other religions which now have relatively few followers.
A scene in the Bezeklik caves in Xinjiang from the 9th century showing people from many origins
Artworks discovered in caves in Xinjiang were made by Buddhist devotees who are believed to have been among some of the ancestors of modern Uyghur people.
They show the diversity of the society at the time, with images dating from the fifth to 14th centuries of Indians, Persians, Chinese and even some resembling Europeans on the cave walls.
Uyghurs are also united by a common language, which is related to Turkish, and by a shared culture of music, dance, food and other traditions.
The Uyghurs home in Xinjiang province is a politically sensitive region
How long have Uyghurs been in Xinjiang?
The oldest known inhabitants of the Tarim basin, a part of Xinjiang, are the Tarim mummies.
The mummified remains have European features and it has been claimed that the people spoke a language related to European Celtic. They lived about 3,800 years ago.
But there have been many influxes of people since then.
A 3,800-year-old mummified body found on the edge of the Tarim basin in Xinjiang, which is said to have European and other features
One of the key factors that has influenced who lives in the area is the presence of the Silk Road – the main worldwide trade route from Roman to Medieval times – through Xinjiang along which travelled goods and people.
Some Chinese experts argue that Uyghur people arrived in Xinjiang around the eighth and ninth centuries after the fall of a society further north called the Uyghur Khaganate.
Other experts, however, say that those arrivals were just one of the many waves of immigration into the area, and the modern Uyghur population reflects those past movements of people.
This article was originally published in 2020.
As a possible ceasefire takes shape, Palestinians face the prospect of rebuilding their shattered enclave.
At least 67,194 people have been killed, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, the majority of them (53%) women, children and elderly people.
The war has left 4,900 people with permanent disabilities, including amputations, and has orphaned 58,556 children.
Altogether, one in ten Palestinians has been killed or injured since the war began following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.
The attack killed 1,195 people, including 725 civilians, according to Israeli officials. The IDF says that a further 466 Israeli soldiers have been killed during the subsequent conflict in Gaza.
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Israel says a ceasefire is expected to begin within 24 hours after its government ratifies the ceasefire deal tonight.
Swathes of Gaza have been reduced to rubble
More than 90% of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced, many of them multiple times, following Israeli evacuation orders that now cover 85% of the Gaza Strip.
Few of them will have homes to return to, with aid groups estimating that 92% of homes have been destroyed.
“Despite our happiness, we cannot help but think of what is to come,” says Mohammad Al-Farra, in Khan Younis. “The areas we are going back to, or intending to return to, are uninhabitable.”
The destruction of Gaza is visible from space. The satellite images below show the city of Rafah, which has been almost totally razed over the past two years.
In just the first ten days of the war, 4% of buildings in Gaza were damaged or destroyed.
By May 2024 – seven months later – more than 50% of buildings had been damaged or destroyed. At the start of this month, it rose to 60% of buildings.
A joint report from the UN, EU and World Bank estimated that it would take years of rebuilding and more than $53 billion to repair the damage from the first year of war alone.
A surge in aid
Central to the promise of the ceasefire deal is that Israel will allow a surge of humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.
The widespread destruction of homes has left 1.5 million Palestinians in need of emergency shelter items.
Many of these people are living in crowded tent camps along Gaza’s coast. That includes Al Mawasi, a sandy strip of coastline and agricultural land that Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone”.
Aid agencies report that families are being charged rent of up to 600 shekels (£138) for tent space, and over $2,000 (£1,500) for tents.
Israel has forbidden the entry of construction equipment since the war began and has periodically blocked the import of tents and tent poles.
Restrictions on the entry of food aid have created a famine in Gaza City, and mass hunger throughout the rest of the territory.
Data from Israeli border officials shows that the amount of food entering Gaza has frequently been below the “bare minimum” that the UN’s famine-review agency says is necessary to meet basic needs.
As a result, the number of deaths from malnutrition has skyrocketed in recent months.
To date, Gaza’s health ministry says, 461 people have died from malnutrition, including 157 children.
“Will Netanyahu abide this time?”
As talks of a ceasefire progressed, the Israeli assault on Gaza City continued.
Footage shared on Tuesday, the two-year anniversary of the war, showed smoke rising over the city following an airstrike.
A video posted on Wednesday, verified by Sky News, showed an Israeli tank destroying a building in the city’s northern suburbs.
Uncertainty still remains over the future of Gaza, with neither Israel nor Hamas agreeing in full to the peace plan presented by US president Donald Trump. So far, only the first stage has been agreed.
A previous ceasefire, agreed in January, collapsed after Israel refused to progress to the agreement’s second stage. With that in mind, many in Gaza are cautious about their hopes for the future.
“Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time?,” asks Aya, a 31-year old displaced Palestinian in Deir al Balah.
“He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now.”
Additional reporting by Sam Doak, OSINT producer.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
When the peace deal came, it came quickly.
Rumours had been spreading over the course of the day, anticipation grew. A source told me that a deal would be done by Friday, another said perhaps by Thursday evening.
Israel and Hamas agree to peace deal – live updates
They were both wrong. Instead, it came much sooner, announced by Donald Trump on his own social media channel. Without being anywhere near the talks in Egypt, the president was the dominant figure.
Few will argue that he deserves the credit for driving this agreement. We can probably see the origins of all this in Israel’s decision to try to kill the Hamas leadership in Doha.
The attack failed, and the White House was annoyed.
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‘Hostages coming back,’ Trump tells families
Arab states started to express themselves to Trump more successfully, arguing that it was time for him to rein in Benjamin Netanyahu and bring an end to the war.
They repeated the call at a meeting during the UN General Assembly, which seems to have landed. When the president later met Netanyahu, the 20-point plan was born, which led to this fresh peace agreement.
Donald Trump holds a note saying a deal is ‘very close’. Pic: Reuters
Does it cover everything? Absolutely not. We don’t know who will run Gaza in the future, for a start, which is a pretty yawning hole when you consider that Gaza’s fresh start is imminent.
We don’t know what will happen to Hamas, or to its weapons, or really how Israel will withdraw from the Strip.
But these talks have always been fuelled by optimism, and by the sense that if you could stop the fighting and get the hostages home, then everything else might just fall into place.
Reaction to the peace deal in Tel Aviv from Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is being held hostage. Pic: Reuters
In order to agree to this, Hamas must surely have been given strong assurances that, even at some level, its demands for Palestinian self-determination would bear fruit. Otherwise, why would the group have given up their one trump card – the 48 hostages?
Once they have gone, Hamas has no leverage at all. It has precious few friends among the countries sitting around the negotiating table, and it is a massively depleted fighting force.
So to give up that power, I can only assume that Khalil al-Hayya, the de facto Hamas leader, got a cast-iron guarantee of… something.
Arab states will greet this agreement with joy. Some of that is to do with empathy for the Palestinians in Gaza, where 67,000 people have been killed and more than 10% of the population has become a casualty of war.
An Israeli soldier stands next to the parcels of humanitarian aid awaiting to be transferred into Gaza in July. File pic: Reuters
But they will also welcome a path to stability, where there is less fear of spillover from the Gaza conflict and more confidence about the region’s economic and political unity.
Trump’s worldview – that everything comes down to business and deal-making – is welcomed by some of these leaders as a smart way of seeing diplomacy.
Jared Kushner has plenty of friends among these nations, and his input was important.
Read more about 7 October:
‘It is trauma’: Two lives torn apart
‘Instead of getting married, they got buried together’
For many Israelis, this comes down to a few crucial things. Firstly, the hostages are coming home. It is hard to overstate just how embedded that cause is to Israeli society.
The return of all 48, living and dead, will be a truly profound moment for this nation.
Secondly, their soldiers will no longer be fighting a war that, even within the higher echelons of the military, is believed to be drifting and purposeless.
Thirdly, there is growing empathy for the plight of the Gazans, which is tied to a fourth point – a realisation that Israel’s reputation on the world stage has been desperately tarnished.
Some will object to this deal and say that it is too weak; that it lets Hamas off the hook and fails to punish them for the atrocities of 7 October.
It is an accusation that will be levelled by far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition government. It could even collapse the administration.
But for most people, in Israel, Gaza, across the Middle East and around the world, it is a moment of relief. Last week, I was in Gaza, and the destruction was absolutely devastating to witness.
Whatever the compromises, the idea that the war has stopped is, for the moment at least, a beacon of optimism.
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