in China, hundreds of Uyghur villages forcibly renamed

According to the NGO Human Rights Watch, hundreds of village names have been changed in the region where the Uighurs live.

Village names have been erased in Xinjiang, in western China, the region where the Uyghurs live. According to a report by the NGO Human Rights Watch, published Tuesday June 18, changes have taken place in 3,600 localities out of the 25,000 in the region, with marginal changes involving punctuation or spelling. But at least 630 of these villages have completely changed their names, particularly those which directly referred to Uyghur culture and history.

The village of Dutar, whose meaning corresponds to a Uyghur musical instrument, was changed to the “red flag” village. The same fate is applied to the locality named after a Uighur poet, Qutpidin Mazar, whose name was transformed in 2018 to become the village of the Rose.

The Chinese communist regime has become a specialist in the erasure of cultures; it has used the same process in Tibet for more than 70 years. The process involves the destruction of religious sites, or even the ban on learning the language. Beijing takes pleasure in erasing the names of Uyghur streets and towns, but also the name of the country itself, explains Dilnur Reyhan, author at the Uyghur Institute of Europe.

“Erasing culture is the very essence of this Chinese colonialism. It included a change in the names of streets and towns. And what is most striking is the erasure of the name of the Uighur country which is East Turkestan, commonly called Xinjiang, which is a colonial name which means ‘New Territory’. This is why replacing them with another name is to erase the very identity and existence of this people.analyzes Dilnur Reyhan.

Xinjiang, the Chinese name for East Turkestan, is therefore a victim of the classic methods used by dictatorships. The Soviets erased from official photos people who were no longer in the odor of sanctity in the USSR.