Rushan Abbas, Executive Committee Chair of the World Uyghur Congress and Executive Director of Campaign for Uyghurs, has accused the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of using financial repression as a weapon to further its systematic persecution of the Uyghur population. Speaking at a Human Rights Foundation (HRF) event, Abbas described the economic strategies used by Beijing as a calculated effort to erase Uyghur identity.
“This is not just discrimination—it is financial warfare,” Abbas said, according to a report by the World Uyghur Congress. She outlined how Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, which many Uyghurs refer to as East Turkistan, are being economically suffocated through property seizures, account freezes, and denial of job opportunities.
Her remarks emphasized how financial control is central to the CCP’s broader strategy of repression, adding “a devastating financial dimension to the genocide Uyghurs are facing.”
Abbas pointed to the forced displacement of Uyghur farmers and property owners as one example of the CCP’s strategy. Between 2001 and 2021, land transfers in the region surged 50-fold, pushing countless Uyghur families off their land and handing control to state-backed entities. Property owners, especially those detained in so-called re-education camps, were unable to re-register their homes, which were then transferred to Han Chinese settlers.
The economic clampdown, according to Abbas and other experts such as Adrian Zenz, goes hand in hand with the regime’s “Poverty Alleviation Program,” which they argue serves as a front for forced labor. Uyghurs are relocated under tight surveillance to factory jobs with no real choice or compensation. “Every bank transaction is monitored, every app tracked,” Abbas said. “There is no economic autonomy, only control.”
She described Xinjiang as a police state where financial repression is used to stifle dissent and destroy Uyghur culture. “This is modern-day slavery in the guise of development,” she concluded.
The CCP has long been accused by international rights organizations of using mass surveillance, forced labor, religious suppression, and arbitrary detention to exert control over the Uyghur population. Human rights advocates argue that financial repression is another layer of this control, stripping millions of Uyghurs not only of their freedoms, but also of their means to live independently.
Despite growing international condemnation, China maintains that its policies in Xinjiang are aimed at promoting development and combating extremism. But advocates like Abbas continue to push for stronger global action, warning that the economic dimension of the oppression is both insidious and devastating.
