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:
Ministers face revolt over anti-genocide amendment
MPs and peers want to ban the use of NHS funds to buy goods from regions, such as Xinjiang in China, in which there is a “serious risk of genocide”. Between March and June 2020 the Department for Health awarded contracts worth £245m to three companies linked to human rights abuses in the north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang
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.
Historic Uyghur culture is under existential threat
Shaped over centuries by pilgrimage, trade, art and war, a unique culture has been suppressed and exploited by Beijing. Can Uyghur distinctiveness re-emerge?
The Uyghurs’ plight shows the biggest threat to democracy is Western apathy
We know that populist dictators are emboldened by each other’s atrocities, so how many more disappearances will it take before China crosses the West’s “red line”?
“My culture will survive”: the Uyghur poet Fatimah Abdulghafur Seyyah on her family’s devastating persecution
Cut adrift from her background, Seyyah uses poetry to preserve Uyghur culture and prevent it from being characterised by victimhood. “I’m scared of being defined by only genocide,” she says. “My culture is such a joyful, happy desert – it’s sandy, it’s shifting, it’s hot. My dad was always a happy person. I want my culture to be seen by the world as resilient. It’s been there for thousands of years. It will survive.”
Behind Xi Jinping’s Great Wall of Iron
The 12 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China have been repressed and maltreated because of their religion, ethnicity and opinions; key elements in a policy set out personally by President Xi Jinping.
The Silencing: a special report on China, the Uyghurs and a culture under attack
From Xinjiang’s network of detention centres to the suppression of tradition, writers report on China’s relentless campaign against the Uyghurs – and what will be lost if it succeeds.