All Reading
This section contains a curated list of useful articles, investigations, books and other reading materials. The list is updated on a weekly basis and suggestions for additions are welcome.
Starting Points:
Tracking China’s Muslim Gulag - Turning the Desert Into Detention Camps
This investigation by Reuters and Earthrise Media analyzes satellite imagery to plot the construction and expansion of 39 re-education camps, revealing that tripling of the footprint in the space of 17 months.
Xinjiang’s Re-Education and Securitization Campaign: Evidence from Domestic Security Budgets
In August 2018, at a meeting of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the PRC flatly denied the existence of “re-education camps”, stating that they were instead “vocational education and employment training centers to acquire employment skills and legal knowledge”. But the PRC government’s own budgets appear to contradict these assertions.
Mapping Xinjiang’s Detention Camps
This November 2018 report by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre collates and adds to the current open-source research into China’s growing network of extrajudicial ‘re-education’ camps in Xinjiang province.
Inside China's Internment Camps: Tear Gas, Tasers and Textbooks
An AFP examination of more than 1,500 publicly available government documents -- ranging from tenders and budgets to official work reports -- shows the “re-education” centres are run more like jails than schools.
China’s hidden camps
China is accused of locking up hundreds of thousands of Muslims without trial in its western region of Xinjiang. The government denies the claims, saying people willingly attend special “vocational schools” which combat “terrorism and religious extremism”.
Now a BBC investigation has found important new evidence of the reality.
Thoroughly Reforming Them Towards a Healthy Heart Attitude: China's Political Re-education Campaign in Xinjiang.
This paper investigates publicly available evidence of China’s political re-education facilities from official sources, including government websites, media reports and other Chinese internet sources.
What’s the Difference between Prison, Detention Center and Reeducation Camp?
Analysis of satellite imagery reveals key identifying features that differentiate prisons and reeducation camps in Xinjiang - the former are typically larger and have higher security levels, while the latter have less sophisticated designs and are usually smaller.
What Really Happens in China’s ‘Re-education’ Camps
What does it take to intern half a million members of one ethnic group in just a year? Enormous resources and elaborate organization, but the Chinese authorities aren’t stingy. Vast swathes of the Uighur population in China’s western region of Xinjiang — as well as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic minorities — are being detained to undergo what the state calls “transformation through education.” Many tens of thousands of them have been locked up in new thought-control camps with barbed wire, bombproof surfaces, reinforced doors and guard rooms.