Focal Point

Installing WhatsApp, avoiding alcohol, or having too many children can be flagged as signs of “extremism” in East Turkestan. These are just a few of China’s 75 “pre-crime” signals tracked by an algorithm. People are then detained not for what they’ve done, but for what a system predicts they might do. And when the system targets ordinary faith, ordinary life starts to disappear.

In June 2025, a Turkish journalist spent eight days in the region’s Silk Road cities and never once heard the call to prayer. He was turned away from a major mosque three times. Then, an elderly woman on the street whispered a greeting she knew could get her arrested: “As-salamu alaykum.” How does a greeting become a crime in a land Muslims have called home for a thousand years? And why has so much of the Muslim world looked away? In this Focal Point, Imam Tom Facchine traces how the Uyghurs became the target of one of the worst human rights crises of our time, from the betrayals by major powers to the terror label and surveillance system that now police their daily lives.

This episode covers:

— Why the Uyghurs’ roots in East Turkestan run back a thousand years, and how every major power abandoned them

— How the US designated the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist group and labeled Uyghurs at Guantánamo, while seeking China’s support for the Iraq War

— How a system of 75 “pre-crimes” and an estimated $7.2 billion in security investment punishes Uyghurs for what an algorithm predicts they might do

— A recording obtained by RFA’s Uyghur service in which the state describes religious belief as an “ideological illness”

— Why China is committing ethnic cleansing: counterterrorism, resources, or nation-building, and what we can do about it

References: https://yqn.io/uyghurs-fp