Washington, D.C., May 2 — The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) has warned that the Uyghur Region (East Turkistan) is facing increasingly severe restrictions on the press, calling conditions there among the most extreme cases of media suppression in China as World Press Freedom Day approaches.
Citing Reporters Without Borders’ 2025 Press Freedom Index, the UHRP noted China’s 178th-place ranking out of 180 countries and said the situation is particularly acute in the Uyghur Region. The group highlighted findings from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) showing that in 2024 foreign reporters who travelled to the region were followed by plainclothes police and that prospective interviewees were frequently intimidated. More than three-quarters of FCCC-surveyed reporters who visited the area reported encountering serious barriers to reporting, UHRP said.
UHRP also pointed to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) data identifying China as the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with at least 50 media workers imprisoned. The organisation noted that nearly half of those detained are Uyghur, despite Uyghurs making up under one percent of China’s population.
The group described the dismantling of Uyghur-language media as long-term and systematic. After the 2009 Urumchi protests, a ten-month internet blackout eliminated roughly 80 percent of Uyghur-operated websites, and the subsequent imprisonment of site webmasters amounted, UHRP said, to a “digital book burning.” Remaining Uyghur-language print outlets, the group added, have largely been reduced to translating state-approved Chinese content.
UHRP referenced its 2021 report by Abdullah Qazanchi and Abduweli Ayup documenting the persecution of media workers from outlets including Xinjiang Television Station, Xinjiang Gazette, Xinjiang Youth magazine, and Kashgar Uyghur Press. The organisation also warned that China’s 2026 “ethnic unity law” will further marginalise the Uyghur language by establishing Chinese-language dissemination as the legal norm in public life.
According to UHRP, state-run outlets such as Xinhua, China Daily and CGTN have filled the information space with official narratives, distributing that content both inside China and on international platforms—including Facebook, X and YouTube—that are themselves blocked within China. Beijing, the group said, pairs tight domestic censorship with sophisticated global messaging campaigns, from paid placements in established media to support from influencers who present state narratives as independent viewpoints.
UHRP argued that international resistance to these information controls has been inadequate. The group alleged that some commercial actors, academic institutions and governments have accepted official narratives or avoided scrutiny; it cited hotel developments, university-sponsored visits and trade delegations to the region as examples of engagement that often proceeds despite documented repression.
The UHRP warned that the combined effect of imprisoned Uyghur journalists, harassment of foreign correspondents and disruption of diaspora-led media has created an “informational void” in which state narratives can dominate. The organisation framed this not as a failure of investigative journalists—many of whom still pursue remote reporting—but as a broader “failure of curiosity” among institutions that shy away from difficult questions for economic or political convenience.
On World Press Freedom Day, UHRP urged policymakers, media organizations and the public to examine who benefits from the informational blackout surrounding the Uyghur Region and to recognize that Uyghurs continue to bear the costs of restricted press freedom and suppressed independent reporting.
(This article is based on syndicated material and is republished as received.)
