The Strange Death of the Uyghur Internet

Ekpar Asat, the founder of one of the most popular Uyghur-language websites, turned his college project into a successful news site and forum in 2007.

There were pictures of his role models on the wall. Asat, also known as Mr. Bagdax, was invited to provincial government events and to the offices of China's tech giants. The platform quickly grew to over 100,000 users even if it had to adhere to China's strict censorship rules.

After returning from an entrepreneurial leadership program organized by the US State Department, Asat was rounded up along with 1 million Uyghur and other Turkic minorities.

Bagdax and other popular Uyghur websites ceased to be updated within a year. They weren't the only people. The majority of independent Uyghur-run websites stopped to exist as Beijing cracked down on dissent in the region.

Byler is an author of several books on China's treatment of Uyghurs. Members of the minority living abroad say that people working on Uyghur-language products have been arrested. The majority Muslim region of China has been hit by a number of terrorist attacks in the past two decades. The Chinese government has been accused of wiping out the culture of ethnic minorities. According to Beijing, the camps are re education centers for job training.

Rayhan Asat says that the shutdown can be seen as an attack against Uyghur language and culture and that the Chinese government has often targeted the region's best and brightest. Why would an expert in technology need to be educated? She wants to know what skills he needs. There was no response from the Public Security Bureau of Urumqi.

Urumqi is not a Silicon Valley outpost. A small group of tech companies began to form south of the Grand Bazaar by the year 2014). The bloom was short-lived and in 2016 it was all over. The founder of Bilkan says that the region became a prison without walls. The manager of Bilkan was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being arrested. He is working on a doctorate in history after shuttering his company.