Cultural erasure: Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang

The Chinese government has embarked on a systematic campaign to rewrite the cultural heritage of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China by desecrating or “rectifying” mosques and indigenous sacred sites. This report maps over 900 mosques and other important Uyghur religious-cultural sites across Xinjiang, analyses their condition before and after 2017, and then used statistical extrapolation to estimate the full extent of their destruction and alteration.