Uyghurs in China: The Most Heavily Jailed Group in the World

Uyghurs are the most heavily imprisoned people in the world according to alarming figures released by a Uyghur rights group, claiming that at least 1 in 26 of East Turkistan (Xinjiang)’s non-Han citizens have been incarcerated.
According to the Washington DC-based advocacy group, Uyghur Human Rights Project, (UHRP) 3,814 Turkic people per 100,000 were jailed in East Turkistan (Xinjiang) between 2017–2022 compared with the figure for China of 80 Han Chinese per 100,000. This dwarfs El Salvador’s hitherto notorious record of imprisoning 1,086 per 100,000 of its citizens.
The UHRP probe into prison numbers in China has shown that despite Uyghurs being only one percent of the total population of the superpower, one third of its total prison population is made up of Turkic peoples scattered throughout the province on its far northwestern flank, roughly four times the size of France.
Ben Carrdus, senior researcher at the UHRP and co-author of the report with Peter Irwin, UHRP Associate Director for Research & Advocacy, told “Bitter Winter” they were “stunned” by the statistics. Sifting through the data “over and over again,” he said they were “almost in disbelief.” The figures add weight to “an ongoing human rights crisis in the Uyghur Region,” he said.