China has changed the names of hundreds of Uyghur villages

The Chinese government is changing the names of settlements inhabited by Uighurs and other Turkic peoples to Chinese ones. This was reported by Human Rights Watch.

In total, 630 Turkish or Islamic villages were renamed, according to human rights activists. The conclusion was drawn up by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics based on a comparison of the names of 25,000 settlements in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region for 2009 and 2023.

"The Chinese government has changed the names of hundreds of Uyghur villages of great historical importance to the local population to names that reflect government propaganda. This is an attempt to blur the national identity of the Uyghurs," said Maya Wang, head of Human Rights Watch China.

About 11 million Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Turkic Muslim peoples live in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.