The Baren Uprising
An armed uprising in the township of Baren near Kashgar is crushed by Chinese forces, ending the relatively open 1980s and starting decades of security campaigns.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority — Sean R. Roberts, Princeton University Press (2020)
- The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land — Gardner Bovingdon, Columbia University Press (2010)
In the 1980s, under reformist leaders such as Hu Yaobang, Uyghurs saw a cultural and religious revival: mosques reopened, pilgrimages resumed and trade with Central Asia grew. In April 1990, a group of men in Baren township, in Akto county south of Kashgar, led by a young man named Zeydin Yusuf, rose in armed revolt with calls for jihad. Troops crushed the uprising within days. Official figures spoke of about two dozen dead; exile groups claimed more. The authorities responded with arrests, controls on mosques and religious schools, and the first of many “strike hard” campaigns.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority — Sean R. Roberts, Princeton University Press (2020)
- The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land — Gardner Bovingdon, Columbia University Press (2010)
A counter-revolutionary armed rebellion by separatists calling for holy war, planned with outside support, and quickly put down.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority — Sean R. Roberts, Princeton University Press (2020)
A local protest, partly against birth-control quotas, mosque closures and Han migration, that turned violent and was met with overwhelming force and mass arrests.
- The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority — Sean R. Roberts, Princeton University Press (2020)
- The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land — Gardner Bovingdon, Columbia University Press (2010)
Why it matters today
Baren marks the end of the 1980s thaw, when mosques reopened and Uyghur culture revived. Since then, Beijing has treated Uyghur religious and political dissent first and foremost as a security threat, a pattern Uyghurs say has only intensified.