The Art Newspaper: The recent detention of the photographer Lu Guang in north-west China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has sparked a global outpouring of protest. Lu Guang, who is known for his work documenting the ecological and human devastation of development in remote regions in China, is the first cultural figure from the Han Chinese majority population to disappear into the prisons of Xinjiang. But most of the region’s Uyghur writers, artists and scholars have already been imprisoned. “So many have been taken away,” says Tahir Hamut, a Uyghur poet and film-maker who escaped to the US. “Most of the more famous [Uyghur] cultural figures have all been arrested. Their families won’t say for certain, because their families are afraid.”
The missing Uyghur cultural figures include the pop star Ablajan Awut Ayup; the poet, writer and screenwriter Perhat Tursun; the dutar player Abdurehim Heyit; the footballer Erfan Hezim; the academic translators Muhammad Salih Hajim (who died in custody in early 2018) and Abdulqadir Jalaleddin; the Uyghur folklore expert Rahile Dawut; the Xinjiang University president, Tashpolat Teyip; and the former president of Xinjiang Medical University Hospital, Halmurat Ghopur.
The Chinese government claims the crackdown is on religious radicalisation, but an unprecedented level of digital surveillance is being used to punish any form of religious or cultural expression, such as owning a Koran or speaking Uyghur. The government has called Islam an “infection” to be eradicated.