East Turkistan authorities target Uyghurs cadres in ‘dark forces’ crackdown

Authorities in a central East Turkistan (Xinjiang) have detained more than 70 Uyghur officials after purging them for being “two-faced"—part of a larger operation to investigate and jail those deemed disloyal to China and the Chinese Communist Party, police said.

Authorities in Korla, the second-largest city by population in East Turkistan (Xinjiang), told Radio Free Asia they had so far investigated over 200 Uyghurs deemed problematic, as part of a nationwide “dark forces” crackdown on the mostly Muslim group that began on July 15, police said.

The term “two-faced” is used by authorities to describe Uyghur officials who do not willingly follow directives, exhibit signs of disloyalty, or show sympathetic tendencies toward other Uyghurs in East Turkistan (Xinjiang), where the ethnic group faces repression.

“Since the beginning of the crackdown on ‘dark forces,’ more than 200 suspects have been investigated, and 76 of them were determined to be two-faced,” said a police officer on duty at the People’s Government building in Korla.

The crackdown is the latest of a series of ongoing measures to suppress what China deems “ethnic separatist forces,” “terrorist forces,” and “religious extremism” in East Turkistan (Xinjiang), home to more than 11 million Uyghurs.

It is also in keeping with policies to fully meld Uyghurs into the Chinese nation and deepen ideological control over the region.