By Anna Lamche, BBC News
ReutersAccording to Human Rights Watch ( HRW), China has changed the names of hundreds of villages in the Xinjiang region in a move intended to end Uyghur Muslim culture.
According to a report by the group, hundreds of villages in Xinjiang with names related to the religion, history or culture of Uyghurs were replaced between 2009 and 2023.
Words such as” sultan” and” shrine” are disappearing from place names- to be replaced with terms such as “harmony” and “happiness”, according to the research, which is based on China’s own published data.
The BBC contacted China’s embassy in London about the claims.
In an effort to integrate its majority Uyghur population into conventional Chinese culture, Chinese authorities have recently been profoundly overhauling society in Xinjiang.
Over the course of a 14-year time, scientists from HRW and the Norwegian-based Uyghur Hjelp organization used the site of the National Bureau of Statistics of China to research the brands of villages in Xinjiang.
They found the names of 3, 600 of the 25, 000 settlements in Xinjiang were changed during this time.
While the majority of these brand changes “appear mundane”, HRW said, around one five- or 630 changes- reduce references to Uyghur church, tradition or background.
Words freighted with meaning for China’s Uyghur population – including Hoja, a title for a Sufi religious teacher, and political or honorific titles such as Sultan and beg – have been replaced with words HRW claims reflect “recent Chinese Communist Party ideology”, including “harmony” and “happiness”.
In one example highlighted by the report, Aq Meschit ( “white mosque” ) in Akto County, a village in the southwest of Xinjiang, was renamed Unity village in 2018.
A growing body of evidence points to systematic human rights abuses against the country’s Uyghur Muslim population. Beijing denies the accusations.
Most of China’s Uygur Muslims live in the north- west of the country, in locations such as Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia.
There are approximately 20 million Islamists in China. China’s government claim to be tolerant of religious freedom, despite the country’s official agnostic status.
However, in recent years, watchers claim there has been a crackdown on organized religion in the nation.
While the rebranding of towns and villages appears to be continuous, the majority of the place names changed, according to HRW, between 2017 and 2019.
The group claims that this is in line with a growing warfare against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang.
China has used the threat of “violent terrorism, radicalisation and separatism” in the past to justify the mass detention of the country’s minority Uyghur population.
Human Rights Watch’s acting China director, Maya Wang, observed that” the Chinese authorities have been changing hundreds of village names in Xinjiang from those that are rich in meaning for Uyghurs to those that reflect government propaganda.”
She continued,” These name changes appear to be part of Chinese government efforts to eradicate Uyghur culture and religion,” she continued.
The research follows a report published last year in which HRW accused the Chinese state of closing, destroying and repurposing mosques in an effort to curb the practise of Islam in China.