Fellow Uygurs should beware of ‘two-faced’ people in separatism fight, Xinjiang official says

A senior Uygur Communist Party official in China’s western Xinjiang has urged Uygur cadres to reveal “two-faced people” and “clean them out”, the latest in a string of senior figures to single out their own ethnic group in the restive region.

It had been unusual for Chinese government statements to specifically target an ethnic minority, but a recent series of statements has come as authorities step up security measures to combat what they see as a rising threat from Islamist extremism.

Rights groups say that party restrictions on the religion and culture of Muslim Uygurs create simmering resentment against the state and its policies that encourage many ethnic majority Han Chinese people to move to the region.

In a commentary published by the official Xinjiang Daily on Monday, Yasin Sidik, a senior official from Kashgar in Xinjiang, urged fellow ethnic Uygur cadres to “bravely stand at the forefront against separatism”.

“We must ... remember to be grateful to the party,” Yasin said. “To forget history is tantamount to betrayal. “We must stand out and reveal ‘two-faced’ people, thoroughly seize bad elements out from the masses, clean them out,” he said.