China appoints Uyghur governor to Xinjiang amid abuse accusations
A new governor has been appointed for Xinjiang, the region where China has been accused of violating the human rights of Uyghur and other Muslim minority groups.
Erkin Tuniyaz, an ethnic Uyghur himself, climbed to notoriety earlier this year when he defended the country’s stance on Xinjiang.
In a video address to the United Nations in February, Tuniyaz said that “all trainees of these facilities had graduated” by October 2019 and now had “stable jobs and are living a normal life”.
The centres, which have been accused of mass detaining Uyghur’s, “educated and rehabilitated people influenced by religious extremism and guilty of minor crimes in order to prevent them from falling victim to terrorism and extremism”, according to Tuniyaz.
A number of countries have called out China’s actions in the western province though Beijing has denied any wrongdoing.
Beyond mass detention, the accusations include political indoctrination, forced labour and forced sterilisations and abortions.
United Nations human rights experts have estimated that around 1m Muslims are being detained in camps in the region.
Tuniyaz, a former vice governor, studied mathematics and received a master’s degree in economics from Xinjiang University in 1999.
He also studied law at the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee from 2009 to 2011.