According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, China has systematically altered the names of numerous villages with religious, historical, or cultural importance for Uighurs, replacing them with names that align with the Chinese Communist Party's ideology.

The rights organization, in cooperation with the Norwegian advocacy group Uyghur Hjelp, discovered that 630 villages in Xinjiang had their names changed between 2009 and 2023. This was determined by analyzing data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Common new names include Happiness, Unity, and Harmony.

“The Chinese government has switched the names of hundreds of villages in Xinjiang, from those with significant meanings for Uyghurs to names reflecting government propaganda,” stated Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch. “These name changes seem to be part of broader efforts to eradicate cultural and religious expressions of Uyghurs.”

In 2018, the international community started focusing on China’s Xinjiang policies when the United Nations reported that over a million predominantly Muslim Uighurs and other Turkic minorities were detained in re-education centers. Beijing claimed the camps were vocational training centers teaching necessary Mandarin and skills to combat "extremism" and "terrorism."

Further investigations revealed additional alleged abuses targeting Uighurs, including forced sterilization, family separation, and suppression of religious beliefs. Human Rights Watch noted that most of the village name changes occurred between 2017 and 2019, during the peak of the crackdown, erasing references to Uighur history and culture.

Some renamed villages include Qutpidin Mazar in Kashgar, which became Rose Flower village in 2018, and Dutar village in Karakax County, which was renamed Red Flag village in 2022.

Uyghur Hjelp interviewed 11 Uighurs living in renamed villages, revealing the significant impact of these changes. One villager struggled to return home after release from a re-education camp because the original village name was no longer recognized in the ticketing system. Another villager wrote a poem and commissioned a song to commemorate their now-altered home.

Former UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet requested access to Xinjiang following reports of the re-education camps, eventually visiting in 2022. She concluded that severe human rights violations had occurred, noting that the widespread arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uighurs and other primarily Muslim groups might constitute crimes against humanity.

Abduweli Ayup, founder of Uyghur Hjelp, called for stronger international action against China regarding the ongoing situation in Xinjiang, where many Uighurs remain unjustly imprisoned. “Governments and the UN human rights office should increase efforts to hold the Chinese government accountable for abuses in the Uyghur region,” he stated.