The Uyghurs: What has been erased cannot be replaced

In 1998 photographer Kevin Bubriski spent a time among the Uyghurs in Kashgar, their ancient capital city in the Xinjiang region of China. His photographs are a glimpse into the lives of a people whose city and culture have been forever altered by repression under China’s President Xi Jinping.

The Xinjiang region of China, known officially as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), in the country’s far northwest is home to about 12 million Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group. The Uyghurs speak their own language and are ethnically and culturally closer to the people of Central Asia than they are to the Han Chinese. For decades, various Chinese leaders in Beijing have worked to undermine the Uyghurs in Xinjiang by encouraging Han Chinese to move to the province in the hopes of diluting the Uyghur population. This has resulted in the Uyghurs now making up less than half of the region’s population.

But with the rise of President Xi Jinping in 2013, and his consolidation of power, the situation of the Uyghurs has become even more dire.

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