The People’s Republic of China has erased a number of village names that are culturally significant to the Uyghur people, replacing them with communist language, according to a report from the Human Rights Watch. The names of about 630 villages in the province of Xinjiang have been stripped of any references to Islam or uniquely Uyghur culture. Instead they have been secularized into Mandarin and replaced with terminology that is ideologically consistent with the PRC. For example, the Aq Meschit Village, meaning “white mosque,” has been diluted into the new...

China has changed the names of hundreds of villages in Xinjiang region in a move aimed at erasing Uyghur Muslim culture, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says. 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...

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Authorities in China’s western Xinjiang region have been systematically replacing the names of villages inhabited by Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities to reflect the ruling Communist Party’s ideology, as part of an attack on their cultural identity, a report released by Human Rights Watch said Wednesday. About 630 villages in Xinjiang have had their names changed to remove references to Islam or the Uyghurs’ culture and history, according to the group’s report, done in collaboration with the Norway-based organization Uyghur Hjelp. The report compared the names of...