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:
Thousands of ‘Terrorism Suspects’ on ‘Shanghai List’ Include Uyghur Children, Elderly
The recently leaked document provides new insight into how China characterizes extremist threats. More than three quarters of the names on a recently leaked Chinese government list of some 10,000 “suspected terrorists” are ethnic Uyghurs, while the document includes hundreds of minors and the elderly, providing rare insight into how Beijing characterizes threats it has used to lock up more than a million people.
Beyond Silence: Transnational Repression of Uyghurs
This report assesses the growing scale of repression of Uyghurs in the Arab states as China’s relations there have strengthened.
Suspicion and subjugation in Xinjiang
The Chinese authorities have long treated the region – and its people – with suspicion. The abuses there can no longer be ignored.
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.
No Space Left to Run: China’s Transnational Repression of Uyghurs
This report is the product of an effort to understand the means by which China targets Uyghurs beyond its borders to silence dissent, gathering cases of China’s transnational repression of Uyghurs from public sources, including government documents, human rights reports, and reporting by credible news agencies to establish a detailed analysis of how the scale and scope of China’s global repression are expanding.
From Xinjiang to Mississippi: Terror Capitalism, Labour and Surveillance
This essay by ethnographic researcher Darren Byler explores the political and economic forces at work in the checkpoints, camps, and factories of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
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.
Why Did the United States Take China’s Word on Supposed Uighur Terrorists?
On Oct. 20, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quietly entered into the Federal Register that the United States no longer recognized the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a “terrorist organization.” China, which portrays ETIM as part of the supposed Uighur terrorist threat that justifies its brutal crackdown in Xinjiang, immediately complained bitterly.
China’s system of oppression in Xinjiang: How it developed and how to curb it
This report describes the history of Uyghur oppression in Xinjiang, outlining the current conditions in the region and Chinese surveillance policies, as well as policy recommendations for addressing the ongoing oppression.
The War on the Uyghurs - China's campaign against Xinjiang's Muslims
This eye-opening book reveals how China has used the US-led Global War on Terror as cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghur people, and Uyghur responses to these devastating government policies.
WATCH: Undercover in the Most Dystopian Place in the World
A reporter poses as a tourist to gain unprecedented access to China’s Xinjiang region, where at least a million Uighurs have been detained in massive internment camps.
China's hidden partner in suppressing the Muslim Uighurs – the US
Last week, President Trump signed the Uyghur Human Rights Protection Act, the first US legislation to focus on the role of the US in protecting the rights of Uighurs and other indigenous Muslims inside China. On the same day, former national security adviser John Bolton revealed in an excerpt from his book that Trump had allegedly told the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, perhaps as early as 2017 and again in 2019, that he agreed with his policy of placing Muslims in mass internment camps.
China’s ‘War on Terror’ uproots families, leaked data shows
For decades, the Uighur imam was a bedrock of his farming community in China’s far west. On Fridays, he preached Islam as a religion of peace. On Sundays, he treated the sick with free herbal medicine. In the winter, he bought coal for the poor. But as a Chinese government mass detention campaign engulfed Memtimin Emer’s native Xinjiang region three years ago, the elderly imam was swept up and locked away, along with all three of his sons living in China. Now, a newly revealed database exposes in extraordinary detail the main reasons for the detentions of Emer, his three sons, and hundreds of others in Karakax County: their religion and their family ties.
Securitizing Xinjiang: Police Recruitment, Informal Policing and Ethnic Minority Co-optation
Following a series of high-profile attacks in Beijing, Kunming and Urumqi by Uyghur militants, the Chinese party-state declared a war on terror in 2014. Since then, China's Xinjiang region has witnessed an unprecedented build-up of what we describe as a multi-tiered police force, turning it into one of the most heavily policed regions in the world. This article investigates the securitization of Xinjiang through an analysis of official police recruitment documents.
Good and Bad Muslims in Xinjiang
For those outside of China, a robust critique of China’s approach in Xinjiang must extend to the philosophical underpinnings that its policies continue to share with the domestic War on Terror in the West.
Securitization, insecurity and conflict in contemporary Xinjiang: has PRC counter-terrorism evolved into state terror?
This issue first provides an overview of the programme of 'de-extremification' and mass internment in Xinjiang since early 2017. It then situates this development against the ‘ideological turn’ in Chinese Communist Party policy under President Xi Jinping, highlighting the new emphasis on stability maintenance and ideational governance. It also explores experiences of (in)security in Uyghur communities in- and outside of Xinjiang in the era of internment to consider how far PRC counter-terrorism initiatives have now evolved into state terror.
‘Counter-extremism’ in Xinjiang: Understanding China’s Community-focused Counter-terrorism Tactics
Drawing on Chinese sources, official documents, and expert analyses, this article argues that the Chinese Communist Party’s focus on extremism as Xinjiang’s main threat aims to legitimize the massive social transformation of the region.
Muslim China and “de-extremification” campaign: Interview with Darren Byler, Living Otherwise
The Living Otherwise project, founded by a group of young experts, is actively engaged in covering what is happening with Uyghurs in China. Dr. Darren Byler, who runs the platform, offers some insight into Islamophobia in China.
Former inmates of China’s Muslim ‘reeducation’ camps tell of brainwashing, torture
Kayrat Samarkand says his only “crime” was being a Muslim who had visited neighboring Kazakhstan. On that basis alone, he was detained by police, aggressively interrogated for three days, then dispatched in November to a “reeducation camp” in China’s western province of Xinjiang for three months.
Chen Quanguo: The Strongman Behind Beijing’s Securitization Strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang
Over the last year, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) Party Secretary Chen Quanguo has dramatically increased the police presence in Xinjiang by advertising over 90,000 new police and security-related positions. This soldier-turned-politician is little known outside of China, but within China he has gained a reputation as an ethnic policy innovator, pioneering a range of new methods for securing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule over Uyghurs, Tibetans and other ethnic minorities in western China.