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:
Uyghur Stories: How Yalkun Uluyol Lost His Father—and Thirty Family Members
In the absence of police reports or court hearings, he only discovered his father’s fate - 16 years in jail - after two years of searching.
‘He disappeared for a year’: The survivors of China’s prison camps in Xinjiang – in pictures
In this photo gallery, some of those freed from re-education camps in Xinjiang - Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other minorities - talk about trying to rebuild their lives in neighbouring Kazakhstan.
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night review – the Uyghurs’ fight for survival in a society where repression is routine
The very fact of being a Uyghur in China turns everyday life into a political act, as this memoir by renowned poet Tahir Hamut Izgil recounts.
From Fear to Freedom: A Uyghur’s Journey
For decades, Kasim Kashgar has lived in fear: first as a Uyghur living in China's Xinjiang region under Beijing's repressive policies, and later as an exile, acutely aware of the risk to his family in China if he speaks out.
‘Like a war zone’: Congress hears of China’s abuses in Xinjiang ‘re-education camps
Two women who say they experienced and eventually escaped Chinese “re-education” camps provided first-hand testimony to members of the US Congress.
Event: Norwegian Parliament Hearings on Human Rights Atrocities Against Uyghurs
In this series of speeches and testimonies hosted at the Norwegian Parliament, hear more about the situation in Xinjiang from those who have experienced it first hand, and learn more about what you and Norway can do.
The Black Gate: A Uyghur Family's Story, Part 2
In the second and final part of NPR’s series "The Black Gate: A Uyghur's Family's Story," a Uyghur man returns to China to find his children who've been sent to "boarding schools" and his wife who's spent two years in prison.
100 Camp Testimonies
In "100 Camp Testimonies," former internees share first-hand accounts of the camps, and how family members, relatives, and friends have been arbitrarily incarcerated.
The Black Gate: A Uyghur Family's Story, Part 1
This episode, the first of a two-part series, tells the story of one Uyghur man and his efforts to reunite with his wife and young children, who were detained by Chinese authorities. For two years, he had no idea what had happened to them.
Chinese-Kazakh Writer, Businesswoman Struggles To Rebuild Life After Abuse In Xinjiang Camp
Before she was imprisoned in her native Xinjiang, Zhazira Asenqyzy was known as a poet and writer as well as a successful businesswoman. But her world was turned upside down in May 2017 when she was taken from her family home and thrown into one of Xinjiang's notorious internment camps.
Who are the Uyghurs? Genocide, forced labour and endless Chinese atrocities; Dolkun Isa interview
Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, discusses the history of Chinese repression in Xinjiang and his lived experiences of the system of forced assimilation, the silencing of influential Uyghur figures and China’s mass detention of Uyghurs.
Xinjiang Victims Database - Lists
This section of the Xinjiang Victims Database contains themed lists of victims, intended to focus on specific groups not identifiable solely by the database's tag system.
Xinjiang Victims Database
Updated on an ongoing basis, The Xinjiang Victims Database is a database which attempts to record all currently known individuals who are detained in Xinjiang internment camps in China, had their documents confiscated and movement restricted, or been subject to forced labour. Many of the profiles also contain personal testimony from the family and friends of detainees.
The faces of China’s Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang and the brave researcher uncovering their cases one by one
Gene Bunin was in Xinjiang in 2017 when Uyghur friends began to disappear. Since then he has published details of 37,000 victims, aiming to hold China to account.
Exclusive: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses
A Christian Chinese national who spent 10 months in a Xinjiang detention camp has arrived in the United States after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by U.S. lawmakers, human rights activists and international lawyers.
'My hell in Beijing's sterilisation camp' by Gulbahar Haitiwaji
“Like more than one million other Uighurs, I was imprisoned in a Chinese ‘re-education’ camp. The camps, which China describes as ‘schools’, claim to ‘eradicate Islamist terrorism from Uighur minds’. In reality, they aim to eradicate an entire ethnicity. I am neither a separatist nor an Islamic terrorist – just a mother – but on the basis of a nine-minute trial, I was sentenced to seven years of ‘re-education’.”
How I escaped a Chinese internment camp
Zumrat Dawut is a mother of three from Ürümqi, the capital of the Xinjiang autonomous region in China. In 2018, she was arrested and sent to a detention facility for Uyghur women where she said she endured brutal living conditions and beatings. This comic, featuring art by Fahmida Azim, tells Zumrat's story.
Some are just psychopaths': Chinese detective in exile reveals extent of torture against Uyghurs
"We took (them) all forcibly overnight," he said. "If there were hundreds of people in one county in this area, then you had to arrest these hundreds of people." The ex-detective turned whistle-blower asked to be identified only as Jiang, to protect his family members who remain in China. In a three-hour interview conducted in Europe where he is now in exile, Jiang revealed rare details on what he described as a systematic campaign of torture against ethnic Uyghurs in the region's detention camp system, claims China has denied for years.
The Uyghur Tribunal - Hearing Session 2
The Uyghur Tribunal was launched in September 2020 as an independent people’s tribunal to investigate ‘ongoing atrocities and possible Genocide’ against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslim Populations. The Uyghur Tribunal, which has no powers of sanction or enforcement, will confine itself to reviewing evidence in order to reach an impartial and considered judgment on whether international crimes are proved to have been committed by the PRC. There will be two sets of Hearings, at which witnesses will present live evidence. These will be open to the public and streamed live. The first hearings took place between 4 and 7 June 2021. Click here to view recorded livestreams of the second set of hearings from 10 to 13 September 2021.
China: Draconian repression of Muslims in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity
Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region face systematic state-organized mass imprisonment, torture and persecution amounting to crimes against humanity, Amnesty International said as it launched a new report and campaign today.