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:
Former Uyghur Muslim preacher confirmed dead in prison in China’s Xinjiang
A Uyghur Muslim preacher serving a five-year sentence in China’s Xinjiang region for making a religious pilgrimage abroad died in prison in February, according to a local official.
How I Survived a Chinese Re-education Camp: A Uighur Woman Speaks Out
The first and only memoir about the reeducation camps by a Uyghur woman. “I have written what I lived. The atrocious reality.” — Gulbahar Haitiwaji to Paris Match
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.
Meet the “New” Uyghurs: CGTN’s Role in Mediawashing Genocide
China’s flagship international broadcaster, China Global Television Network (CGTN), is central to an influence campaign meant to convince a worldwide public that the Uyghurs and the Uyghur Region have been politically cleansed through reeducation, and that the region is now open for state-approved cultural tourism.
The architecture of repression: Unpacking Xinjiang’s governance
This report is a part of a larger online project which can be found on the Xinjiang Data Project website. The project maps and analyses the governance mechanisms employed by the Chinese party-state in Xinjiang from 2014 to 2021 within the context of the region’s ongoing human rights crisis. The authors have located and scrutinised thousands of Chinese-language sources, including leaked police records and government budget documents never before published. For policymakers, this report will provide an evidence base to inform policy responses including possible sanctions. For the general public and anyone whose interests are linked to Xinjiang and China more broadly, this project can inform risk analysis and ethical considerations.
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 Can Lock Up A Million Muslims In Xinjiang At Once
This investigation reveals the full capacity of China's previously secret network of prisons and detention camps in Xinjiang: enough space to detain more than 1 million people.
New Report Details Firsthand Accounts Of Torture From Uyghur Muslims In China
A new report from Amnesty International details systematic state-organized mass imprisonment, torture and persecution against people in Xinjiang province, as well as extensive cover-up efforts by the Chinese government.
“Like We Were Enemies In a War” - China’s Mass Persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang
This report, based on first-hand testimonies and satellite imagery data analysis, gives an extensive account of life inside the internment camps.
The Chief Witness: Escape from China’s modern-day concentration camps
“I will never forget the camp. I cannot forget the eyes of the prisoners, expecting me to do something for them. They are innocent. I have to tell their story, to tell about the darkness they are in. It is so easy to suffocate us with the demons of powerlessness, shame, and guilt. But we aren't the ones who should feel ashamed.”
“Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots” - China’s Crimes against Humanity
This report outlines the evidence for the conclusion that the Chinese government has committed crimes against humanity against the Turkic Muslim population.
Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang
As mass detentions and surveillance dominate the lives of China’s Uyghurs and Kazakhs, a woman struggles to free herself.
The future of Uyghur cultural — and halal — life in the Year of the Pig
Up until 2018, Lunar New Year celebrations were conspicuously absent from Uyghur society. Today, it is the largest cultural event of the year — for the wrong reasons.
Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape
Women in China's "re-education" camps for Uighurs have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured, according to detailed new accounts obtained by the BBC.
‘It Went on For Four Hours, Just to Film a Single Video’: Uyghur Former Camp Instructor
Qelbinur Sidik, 51, is one of the few people to relate their experiences working at a facility in the vast network of internment camps in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). A well-respected instructor, Sidik was forced to teach the language at a men’s camp between March and September 2017, as well as at a women’s camp between September and October of that year. Sidik, who now lives in the Netherlands, estimates that the two camps held around 3,000 and 10,000 detainees, respectively.
Our souls are dead': how I survived a Chinese 're-education' camp for Uighurs
After 10 years living in France, I returned to China to sign some papers and I was locked up. For the next two years, I was systematically dehumanised, humiliated and brainwashed.
Big Data Program Targets Xinjiang’s Muslims - Leaked List of Over 2,000 Detainees Demonstrates Automated Repression
A big data program for policing in China’s Xinjiang region arbitrarily selects Turkic Muslims for possible detention, Human Rights Watch said today. A leaked list of over 2,000 detainees from Aksu prefecture provided to Human Rights Watch is further evidence of China’s use of technology in its repression of the Muslim population.
Inside A Xinjiang Detention Camp
It started as a single small compound. Within 18 months, it had grown to more than 10 times its original size, capable of holding about 3,700 detainees. China's mass internment system for Muslims in Xinjiang is so secretive that, despite a growing international outcry, little is known about any one detention camp. Interviews and architectural modeling offer a rare and terrifying view into a massive internment complex.
A life story of former Chinese concentration camp teacher
On March 1, 2017 at the start of the mass imprisonment campaign of the Uyghurs led by the Chinese Communist Party, the life of a schoolteacher from an influential family was turned upside down, when she was recruited as a teacher in a “re-education camp”. She speaks about the inhuman conditions, of detention, rape, torture, forced sterilisation and the absurdity of her educational mission. Her witness account was published previously by the French newspaper Libération on 20th July.
“99 bad things”: A man’s 2-year journey through Xinjiang’s complex detention network
Three years after the start of the mass incarcerations in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, there are now dozens of eyewitness accounts testifying to the coercive, violent, and often cruel nature of Xinjiang’s “re-education initiative”. Among these, however, few are as informative, comprehensive, and detailed as Erbaqyt Otarbai’s, a Kazakh truck driver who – following a trip to Xinjiang in May 2017 – found himself caught up in the system for two full years, with the majority of the time spent in detention centers, “re-education” camps, a hospital, an improvised factory, and house arrest. His account – independently corroborated various times over by former cellmates, satellite images, and testimonies for victims that he met along the way – offers a rare and invaluable view of not only the system’s many facets but also of their evolution.