With regard to citizenship, China has never regarded Uighurs and Tibetans as its citizens. For that reason, all the time they have a different treatment for those ethnic groups, even though they are recognized as people with a distinct culture and they own their own territory. Therefore, the Chinese constitution granted a national territorial autonomous region: one is for Tibet, one is for Inner Mongolia, and one is for Uighurs and others.
When it comes to citizenship or applying the Chinese criminal code, it is applied differently for Uighurs and Tibetans, and especially for Uighurs, because the Uighur Autonomous Region is directly bordered by eight countries, where the Chinese eye to expand. For that reason, the Chinese government puts on restrictions to strip us of identity: one is a national identity, like characters, language and history, and another is religious identity.
When your two main pillars are restricted, you are criminalized. When you are criminalized, you don't get any benefits from citizenship. For example, for Canadian Uighurs, if you apply at the Chinese embassy right now for a Chinese visa, you have a different set of rules. If you are of Uighur origin and holding a Canadian passport, to go to the Chinese embassy for the same visa, you have a totally different set of rules.
Let us look at Uighurs, for example. If your passport has expired and you live abroad, if you go to the Chinese embassy, they extend your passport. Instead, they cut your passport on one corner and send you to China directly with a one-way travel document.
If your child is born outside, as I mentioned in my brief statement, you will not get any ID documents. The children born outside of China by Uighur parents now become stateless.
It is a very tragic situation.