All Reading
This section contains a curated list of useful articles, investigations, books and other reading materials. The list is updated on a weekly basis and suggestions for additions are welcome.
Starting Points:
“The Uyghurs of Kazakhstan have been pressured into inactivity”
The Kazakhstan Uyghur Association has not been active in searching out relatives arrested in Xinjiang, nor has it made many statements regarding the issue. Azattyq talked to a main advisor of the World Uyghur Congress, Kakharman Kozhamberdi, about the reasons behind this state of affairs.
Ethnic Policy in China: Is Reform Inevitable
Following significant interethnic violence beginning in 2008, Chinese intellectuals and policymakers are now engaged in unprecedented debate over the future direction of their country's ethnic policies. This study attempts to gauge current Chinese opinion on this once-secretive and still highly sensitive area of national policy. Leading public intellectuals, as well as some party officials, now openly call for new measures strengthening national integration at the expense of minority rights and autonomy. Adjustments in rhetoric and policy emphasis are expected as the party-state attempts to strengthen interethnic cohesiveness as a part of its larger agenda of stability maintenance.
China: Minority Exclusion, Marginalization and Rising Tensions
This report demonstrates how China’s overarching agenda for ‘unity’, under the guise of ‘development’ and ‘security’, is having a particularly grave impact on its minority communities, including the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The Xinjiang Conflict: Uyghur Identity, Language Policy, and Political Discourse
This study explores Chinese language policy and language use in Inner Asia, as well as the relation of language policy to the politics of Uyghur identity. Language is central to ethnic identity, and official language policies are often overlooked as critical factors in conflict over ethnic nationalism. In Chinese Inner Asia, any solution to ethnic conflict will include real linguistic and cultural autonomy for major ethnic groups.
Autonomy in Xinjiang: Han Nationalist Imperatives and Uyghur Discontent
This paper analyzes the sources of Uyghur discontent and ethnonational conflict in Xinjiang since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.