Authorities in China's western Xinjiang region are systematically replacing the names of villages inhabited by Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities to reflect the ruling Communist Party's ideology, a report released by Human Rights Watch says.
A Human Rights Watch Report found that Chinese authorities renamed more than 600 Uyghur villages to remove religious or cultural references.
While the majority of the name changes "appear mundane", about 630 villages in Xinjiang have had their names changed to remove references to Islam or the Uyghurs' culture and history, according to the report. As part of the crackdown, more than one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic minorities were estimated to be held in extra-legal internment camps.
"This blatant change of names of streets and shrines and mosques our history is being erased in front of our eyes and the world is not doing anything about it.The changes to the names of Xinjiang villages included removing mentions of religion, including terms such as "Hoja", a title for a Sufi religious teacher, and "haniqa", a type of Sufi religious building, or terms such as "baxshi", a shaman.
"Under Xi Jinping, the CCP has intensified its colonial dispossession of Xinjiang and other borderland territories."
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