By Zarak Khan | 2025-09-05

As Xinjiang's Muslims endure oppression under Beijing, it is using paid trips and other means of persuasion to buy foreign clerics' silence.

In recent years, the Chinese government has intensified efforts to host delegations of Islamic scholars from Muslim-majority nations across South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East, organizing state-sponsored visits to the Xinjiang region.

These carefully managed tours, part of what analysts describe as China's "Islamic diplomacy," appear designed to cover up systemic repression of the Uyghur Muslim population. They project a narrative of harmony and stability.

A number of international bodies, including the US State Department and French and Canadian parliaments, have denounced Chinese policy in Xinjiang as genocide.

Those abuses include mass imprisonment, forced sterilization of women, suppression of Islamic practices and encouragement of ethnic Chinese in-migration to dilute the percentage of Muslims.

Junkets for clerics

In July, the Chinese embassy in Islamabad arranged a visit by a Pakistani delegation, mostly clerics, to Urumqi, Altay, Kashgar and other Muslim-populated cities. They toured Islamic institutions, cultural centers and an exhibition showcasing Beijing's policies on "counterterrorism and anti-extremism."

In April 2024, a delegation from the Malaysian Chinese Muslim Association visited similar places in Xinjiang, reported the government-run Shiliuyun-Xinjiang Daily at the time.

In 2023, the regional government of Xinjiang hosted a larger international group of Islamic clerics from 14 nations, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Tunisia, according to China's Foreign Ministry.

Chinese Politburo member and then-Xinjiang Party secretary Ma Xingrui described the visit as an opportunity for foreign religious figures to gain "deeper understanding of the real Xinjiang."

Some regrets by a participant

Some participants, however, have offered more cautious reflections.

Chinese embassies "regularly send Islamic clerics from Muslim-majority countries, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Malaysia, to visit Xinjiang to counter the global perception of Beijing's treatment of the Uyghur Muslim community," a Pakistani cleric who joined one of those programs said.

He requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and the nature of Sino-Pakistani relations.

"The biggest problem is that these visits are entirely government-controlled. We met only with clerics and community leaders linked to the authorities," the participant told Focus.

"We were not allowed to move freely or meet people independently," he added, describing the trips as government propaganda.

Beyond official tours, Beijing has employed financial incentives and institutional outreach to shape Muslim-majority nations' positions on Xinjiang.

In 2019, the Wall Street Journal disclosed how several Indonesian Muslim organizations had received donations, financial support and other forms of assistance from Beijing.

Those bodies then stopped criticizing China's treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

Abuses go on

However, observers are still documenting abuses in Xinjiang.

The US State Department, in its 2024 report on human rights in China, noted "credible reports" of continuing oppression in Xinjiang such as "arbitrary or unlawful killings", torture, enforced medical procedures and the detention "since 2017, of more than one million Uyghurs and members of other predominantly Muslim minority groups."

Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a February report highlighted Beijing's ongoing restrictions on Uyghurs' freedom of movement, particularly those seeking to travel abroad, calling it a violation of their internationally protected right to leave their country.

"The government has permitted Uyghurs in the diaspora to make restricted visits to Xinjiang, but with the apparent aim of presenting a public image of normalcy in the region," HRW said.

To amplify these concerns, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute chaired a panel discussion in the British House of Lords in January on "forgotten genocide" in Xinjiang.

In Xinjiang, Chinese authorities carry out "mass surveillance, movement restrictions, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances all in the name of combatting 'terrorism' and 'extremist separatists,'" exiled Uyghur activist Sayragul Sauytbay said during the discussion.