Franchised chains, said Peter Irwin, co-executive director of the Network for Uyghur Rights, a Uyghur organization that supports emerging Uyghur researchers and advocates, find it “easier for them to claim they have no control over their operations. But this ignores the fact that these companies continue to control the [intellectual property] that makes these locations valuable in the first place.” Irwin placed Western companies operating in the region on a spectrum of harm. At one end, he said, are chains like KFC and Pizza Hut, which opened restaurants in the region in the mid-2000s, “where it’s harder to draw a direct line between their presence and human rights abuses.” At the other, he said, are companies like Hilton, “which built a hotel on the site of a demolished Uyghur mosque, or companies who actively promote state narratives that appropriate Uyghur culture and obscure atrocity crimes.” In 2021, The Telegraph reported that a Hampton by Hilton hotel was being built in Hotan on the site of a demolished mosque. Hilton’s website now lists the hotel as open. Starbucks, Irwin said, “certainly sits towards the latter end of the spectrum.”