Uyghurs in Pakistan

There is a small community of Uyghurs in Pakistan (Urdu: ایغور‎), originating from the Xinjiang autonomous region of China.

Some members of ethnic minorities of China, primarily Muslim Uyghurs and Tajiks from Xinjiang, have historically migrated to and settled in the northern parts of Pakistan. The earliest migrants, numbering in the thousands, came in as traders during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the area that is Pakistan was still under British rule. Most of these Uyghurs used to have warehouses and residences in towns in the North and in parts of upper Punjab and used to travel between Kashgar and Yarkand and these places, regularly. Others came in the 1940s in fear of communist persecution. A few hundred more fled to Pakistan in the aftermath of a failed uprising in Khotan in 1954. Later waves of migration came in 1963 and again in 1974. Some Pakistani descendants who previously lived in Xinjiang, especially at Kashgar, have also moved back to Pakistan with their Uyghur spouses.

Beginning in the 1980s, Pakistan began to become a major transit point for Uyghurs going on the hajj; the temporary Uyghur settlements that formed there became the focal points of later, more permanent communities, as Uyghurs returning from their pilgrimage or from further studies at schools in Egypt and Saudi Arabia decided to settle down in Pakistan rather than return to China. As of 2009^[update], community leaders estimated their total numbers at 3,000 people, with 800 at Gilgit, another 2,000 at Rawalpindi, 100 at the border town of Sust on the Karakoram Highway, and the remainder scattered throughout the rest of the country.

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