US lawmakers call on Hilton to cut link to Xinjiang project at site of bulldozed mosque

Name: Xinjiang’s vanishing mosques reflect growing pressure on China’s Uygur Muslims
Uploaded: 2021-07-29T23:27:16.000Z
Duration: 1 min 55 s
Description: Xinjiang’s vanishing mosques reflect growing pressure on China’s Uygur Muslims

Location is ‘emblematic of Chinese government’s campaign to destroy Uygur religious and cultural sites’, US politicians say in letter to CEO

Researchers say authorities demolished or damaged around 16,000 mosques and more than half of Xinjiang’s other religious sites in recent years

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A broken-off minaret from the Xinqu Mosque lies near a Chinese national flag in Changji outside Urumqi, in China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, in May. Photo: Reuters

Reuters

Published: 7:27am, 30 Jul 2021Updated: 10:13pm, 30 Jul 2021

A bipartisan US congressional commission has called on Hilton Worldwide not to allow its name to be associated with a hotel project on the site of a mosque bulldozed by authorities in China’s Xinjiang region, where Washington says minority Muslims have been victims of genocide.

In a letter on Thursday to Christopher Nassetta, president and CEO of Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley and congressman Jim McGovern raised concerns about reports that a Hampton by Hilton hotel was being constructed on the site of the mosque destroyed in 2018 in Xinjiang’s Hotan prefecture.

“The site is emblematic of the Chinese government’s campaign of widespread destruction of Uygur religious and cultural sites in the XUAR and official efforts to eradicate Uygurs’ religious and cultural practices,” the letter said, referring to minority Uygur Muslims and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

The letter, a copy of which was made available to Reuters, was co-signed by the senior Congressional-Executive Commission on China Republicans, Senator Marco Rubio and congressman Jim Smith.

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Xinjiang’s vanishing mosques reflect growing pressure on China’s Uygur Muslims

Hilton Worldwide did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.