2014 Yarkand violence
Violence erupted on 28 July 2014 in Yarkand County (officially spelled Yarkant) of Kashgar Prefecture, Xinjiang, China, and lasted for several days, as Chinese police quelled the local unrest. The official death toll listed 96 fatalities: 59 alleged attackers and 37 bystanders (35 Han and 2 Uyghurs). The World Uyghur Congress claimed 2,000 people died, while the Hong Kong–based Apple Daily gave an estimate of 3,000 to 5,000 dead, citing unnamed sources.
Quotes
[edit]- For the PRC, it was a “terrorist attack.” For Uyghurs, it was the Yarkent Massacre: a military assault on a largely unarmed population, followed by a communications blackout, mass arrests, disappearances, and the suppression of every attempt to learn how many people were killed and where their bodies were taken.
… The Yarkent Massacre was not an isolated event. It was a warning of what would soon unfold across the Uyghur region.
After Yarkent, religious identity became even more dangerous. Titles such as imam, hajji, and qari, once signs of respect, became markers that could invite surveillance, detention, or imprisonment. People who had prayed, traveled abroad, held passports, studied religion, or maintained family ties outside the region increasingly became targets.
The mass internment campaign that intensified after 2017 did not emerge suddenly. Yarkent had already shown the logic of the system: first criminalize Uyghur identity and religious life; then treat dissent as extremism; then use “counterterrorism” to justify mass punishment; finally, conceal the victims.
… On each anniversary of July 28, Uyghurs remember not merely a disputed number, but people: women who were taken away, men who went to ask questions and did not return, elders who searched for grandchildren, families who were left without graves, and entire villages forced into silence.
… The blood of Yarkent was not erased when the roads reopened. It was only hidden.- Asiye Uyghur, "July 28: Remembering the Yarkent Massacre", Bitter Winter (July 28, 2026)
