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 detention: Leaked files reveal locations of lost loved ones
A huge collection of data, which are linked to China's treatment of Uyghurs and other minorities, has been handed to the BBC. The cache reveals, in unprecedented detail, China’s use of “re-education” camps and formal prisons as two separate but related systems of mass detention for Uyghurs. They also include information on missing people, seen for the first time by their family members.
Xinjiang Police Files: Inside a Chinese internment camp
A giant cache of secret documents reveals the highly coercive and potentially lethal systems of control used against minority groups in China’s internment camps.
China database reveals the thousands detained in Xinjiang
A leaked list of thousands of detained Uyghurs has helped Nursimangul Abdureshid shed some light on the whereabouts of her missing family members, who have disappeared in China's sweeping crackdown on Xinjiang. The previously unreported database, which has been seen by AFP, lists over 10,000 imprisoned Uyghurs from southwestern Xinjiang's Konasheher county -- including over 100 from Abdureshid's village.
Evidence of the Chinese Central Government’s Knowledge of and Involvement in Xinjiang’s Re-Education Internment Campaign
Documents leaked to the New York Times (also known as the Xinjiang Papers) in November 2019 revealed how Chinese President Xi Jinping laid the groundwork. Now, previously unanalyzed central government and state media commentary surrounding the introduction of the crucial March 2017 “XUAR De-Extremification Regulation” show that several important central government institutions were closely and directly involved in the drafting and even approval of this key legislation.
Thousands of ‘Terrorism Suspects’ on ‘Shanghai List’ Include Uyghur Children, Elderly
A recently leaked Chinese government document provides new insight into how China characterizes extremist threats. More than three quarters of the names on the 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.
Parent-Child Separation in Yarkand Country, Kashgar
New evidence from non-public Xinjiang government spreadsheets has come to light that details the fate of over 10,000 children from the Uyghur majority population county of Yarkand (Kashgar Prefecture). The spreadsheets indicate that a number of them have been placed into state-run orphanages, while others are kept in full-time boarding school facilities. Other spreadsheets show entire households along with the internment status of their members, corroborating the veracity of these lists of “children in difficult circumstances” and giving us a full picture of their actual family situation.
“Ideological Transformation”: Records of Mass Detention From Qaraqash, Hotan
This report describes and analyzes a leaked government document known as the Karakax List which contains in-depth information about the familial and social circles of internees from eight Uyghur neighborhoods.
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.
Leaked Chinese government records reveal detailed surveillance reports on Uyghur families and Beijing's justification for mass detentions
Rozinsa Mamattohti couldn’t sleep or eat for days after she read the detailed records the Chinese government had been keeping on her entire family. Her family’s records, and hundreds of government reports like them, have been leaked to journalists by a patchwork of exiled Uyghur activists. The document reveals for the first time the system used by the ruling Chinese Communist Party to justify the indefinite detention on trivial grounds of not only Mamattohti’s family but hundreds -- and possibly millions -- of other citizens in heavily fortified internment centers across Xinjiang.
The Karakax List: Dissecting the Anatomy of Beijing’s Internment Drive in Xinjiang
The “Karakax List”, named after the county of Karakax (Qaraqash) in Hotan Prefecture, represents the most recent leaked government document from Xinjiang. Over 137 pages, 667 data rows and the personal details of over 3,000 Uyghurs, this document presents the strongest evidence to date that Beijing is actively persecuting and punishing normal practices of traditional religious beliefs, in direct violation of its own constitution.
Document: What Chinese Officials Told Children Whose Families Were Put in Camps
This document, part of 403 pages obtained by the New York Times, tells Chinese officials in Xinjiang how to explain the disappearance of parents and families detained in camps built to hold Muslim minorities. Anguished students asking about their parents were told they had nothing to worry about.
“Wash Brains, Cleanse Hearts”: Evidence from Chinese Government Documents about the Nature and Extent of Xinjiang’s Extrajudicial Internment Campaign
As China’s internment and related propaganda campaign progresses, this article provides crucial incriminating evidence about the real nature and purpose of the region’s “Vocational Skills Education Training Centers” network. The empirical evidence discussed within should suffice to support significant, concrete actions by the international community against this unprecedented atrocity.
Exposed: China’s Operating Manuals for Mass Internment and Arrest by Algorithm
A new leak of highly classified Chinese government documents has uncovered the operations manual for running the mass detention camps in Xinjiang and exposed the mechanics of the region’s Orwellian system of mass surveillance and “predictive policing.”
China Cables: Who Are the Uighurs and Why Mass Detention?
China’s mass detention of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities living in its western region of Xinjiang has sparked alarm and condemnation across the world. The China Cables investigation reveals classified Chinese government directives that provided operational plans for the internment camps and orders for carrying out mass detentions guided by sweeping data collection and artificial intelligence.
To better explain China’s actions in Xinjiang and the findings of the China Cables, this report answers some key questions about who is involved, the crackdown’s origins, and the significance of the secret documents.
The China Cables Investigation
China Cables is an investigation into the surveillance and mass internment without charge or trial of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang province, based on leaked classified Chinese government documents.
5 Takeaways from the Leaked Files on China’s Mass Detention of Muslims
Hundreds of pages of internal papers - known as the Xinjiang Papers - offer new insight into how the program began, how it was justified even as the damage it caused was clear, and how some officials resisted it.
‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims
More than 400 pages of internal Chinese documents provide an unprecedented inside look at the crackdown on ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.
Ministry of Truth: Xinjiang Violence
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to these instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.”