Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Uyghur activists say Beijing has used the language of counterterrorism to suppress their faith, culture and identity. The attacks reshaped security policy around the world. In China, they also reshaped how the state treated one of its own ethnic and religious communities.
Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs in the United States, has said the Sep 11 attacks profoundly reshaped global security policy. For Uyghurs, that reshaping had lasting consequences. China adopted the vocabulary of the global war on terror and applied it to political and cultural activity in Xinjiang, which Uyghurs call East Turkestan.
The shift was not only rhetorical. In August 2002, the United States added a Uyghur separatist group to its terrorist watch list, and China aligned itself with the American-led war on terror. Beijing used this international context to describe Uyghur opposition as religious extremism connected to global jihadist networks, such as al-Qaeda. This framing gave China diplomatic cover for a much broader campaign against Uyghur identity.
A professor sentenced for speaking
The case of Ilham Tohti shows how broad China’s definition of terrorism and separatism has become. Tohti was a prominent Uyghur economics professor who taught in Beijing and founded a website to promote understanding between Uyghurs and Han Chinese.
In September 2014, he was convicted of “separatism” and sentenced to life in prison. His trial was closed to the public and lasted only two days. His appeal was upheld in proceedings that Human Rights Watch said grossly violated his basic rights. Amnesty International described him as a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for peacefully exercising his freedom of expression as an academic and writer.
Twelve years later, his case remains a symbol of the debate over how China defines these crimes. A professor who argued for dialogue, autonomy and legal reform was treated as a national security threat. This shows that the problem is not simply about violence. It is about which voices the state allows to exist.
When ordinary life is called extremism
Uyghur activists argue that accusations against their community should not be equated with terrorism or extremism. Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur linguist, poet and founder of Uyghur Help in Norway, has said peaceful religious practice and cultural expression are being criminalised.
Aziz Isa Elkun, a Uyghur author and researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, has said the Uyghur struggle should not be reduced to accusations of separatism or terrorism. He argues that these policies aim to assimilate Uyghurs into Han Chinese culture and eradicate their traditional way of life, including by criminalising peaceful religious practices such as attending mosques or studying the Quran.
The UK government’s analysis of Xinjiang policy noted that local regulations classify a wide range of behaviour as “extremist,” including cultural and linguistic expressions of Muslim identity. Uyghurs and other Muslim-majority groups therefore face severe restrictions on religious practice, cultural traditions and everyday customs, such as using Islamic greetings and attending religious schools.
Attending a mosque is not terrorism. Learning the Quran is not extremism. Speaking one’s language is not separatism. Yet these ordinary acts have been treated as threats by Chinese authorities.
The 2008 Kashgar attack
Abdurehim Gheni Uyghur, a Uyghur activist and writer based in the Netherlands, has questioned how China defined an attack in Kashgar in 2008, shortly before the Beijing Olympics.
The debate over such incidents matters because definitions shape policy. If a single violent incident is automatically blamed on Uyghur separatism, then an entire community can be treated as suspicious. If peaceful advocacy is grouped with violence, then critics can be silenced without evidence.
Activists argue that China has used a small number of real security incidents to justify a much wider campaign against Uyghur religion, culture and identity. The result, they say, is that the war on terror has been turned against the Uyghur people themselves.
A campaign of mass detention
The scale of the campaign became clear after 2017, when China escalated its strategy in Xinjiang. Security analysts have argued that Beijing sought to “preventively inoculate” the entire Uyghur population from what it regarded as the threat of radicalisation, leading to collective detention and heavy re-education.
In 2014, China launched the “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism.” The campaign expanded into mass arbitrary detention, ideological re-education, surveillance and pressure on Uyghur diaspora networks.gov+1
The UN human-rights office, led by Michelle Bachelet, concluded that the extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity. Human Rights Watch has documented mass detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, religious persecution, family separation, forced labour and violations of reproductive rights.
These abuses are not limited to people accused of violence. They affect ordinary families, students, teachers, religious leaders and cultural figures. The purpose, according to critics, is not only security but the transformation of Uyghur society into a population that has abandoned its language, faith and history.
The lesson for the world
The Uyghur experience shows how the language of security can be used to justify repression. What begins as a policy against terrorism can become a policy against a people.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, the lesson for the international community is that counterterrorism must be based on evidence, individual responsibility and the rule of law. It must never be used to punish an entire community for its identity.
Uyghurs are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the right to practise their religion, speak their language and preserve their culture without being called terrorists. Until those rights are respected, the war on terror will continue to be a war on Uyghur identity.