The Uyghur are a Turkic-speaking, historically Muslim ethnic group native to the Tarim Basin oases of Xinjiang in northwestern China, with a documented history as a key population along the Silk Road trade routes connecting Central Asia to China. Uyghur communities have been the subject of extensive, well-documented mass internment, surveillance and cultural-assimilation policies by the Chinese state since approximately 2017, described by multiple governments and human-rights bodies (including a 2022 United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights assessment) as potentially constituting crimes against humanity, a characterization the Chinese government disputes; this atlas records the documented facts of the policies and the contested characterization rather than adjudicating the dispute itself.
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own account Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountCentral Asia (Xinjiang, northwestern China) 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own accountUyghur (a Turkic language) 1 Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically oasis-based agriculture and trade along the Silk Road routes of the Tarim Basin, combined with craft production. 1 Disputed
Population Estimateapproximately 11 to 13 million 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountChinese state census figures for Xinjiang's Uyghur population are disputed by independent demographers, particularly in light of documented state birth-control and internment policies since 2017 that outside researchers argue have suppressed natural population growth. Sources
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