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:
Genomic surveillance: Inside China's DNA dragnet
The Chinese Government is building the world’s largest police-run DNA database in close cooperation with key industry partners across the globe. Yet, unlike the managers of other forensic databases, Chinese authorities are deliberately enrolling tens of millions of people who have no history of serious criminal activity. Those individuals (including preschool-age children) have no control over how their samples are collected, stored and used.
The Global Implications of “Re-education” Technologies in Northwest China
This terrain assessment describes how Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang were targeted by digital and biometric surveillance technologies of the “re-education” system. Its main conclusion is that the world is witnessing the birth of a new form of technology-enabled systems of social and behavioral control. This rise in authoritarian statecraft coincides with breakthroughs in face surveillance, voice recognition, automated data recovery tools and algorithmic assessments of social media histories in China’s private and public technology industry.
Cultural genocide is the new genocide
The Chinese government is undertaking a broad assault on the culture and heritage of the Uighurs, Kazakhs and other indigenous peoples in Xinjiang, China, including disappearing their poets, artists, scholars and others cultural icons. Most are gone without a trace, but we must assume they are locked away in the new concentration camps alongside the many hundreds of thousands of other innocent people detained there illegally. It's a 21st century moral catastrophe, writes the China expert Magnus Fiskesjö.
Xinjiang Camps: A Book Exposes CCP’s Lies
An interview with Kazakh author Turarbek Kusainov, whose book on the experience of ethnic Kazakhs in the transformation through education camps is greatly embarrassing China.
Interview: ‘To Fight for Truth is a Great Calling’
On March 4, Sayragul Sauytbay was one of a dozen recepients of the Annual International Women of Courage (IWOC) Award. Originally from the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), Sayragul is a former medical doctor who was separated from her family, tortured, imprisoned, and faced execution for speaking out about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) repression of Muslim minorities. In this Q&A, Sayragul gives her thoughts on her award and the message it sends to Chinese authorities and about the reasons behind China’s persecution of Muslim minorities forced into the camps.
Exclusive: Amazon turns to Chinese firm on U.S. blacklist to meet thermal camera needs
Amazon.com Inc has bought cameras to take temperatures of workers during the coronavirus pandemic from a firm the United States blacklisted over allegations it helped China detain and monitor Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Geolocating Explosive Growth in Preschools in Western China due to 're-education' Policies
Twenty facilities that imagery analysis, press and professional journals suggest house Uyghur children have been identified in this first study of geolocating China's detention infrastructure targeting Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups.
“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.
More Evidence About Camps and Prisons for Uyghurs in Xinjiang
Photos and testimonies from residents in Xinjiang’s Kashi prefecture expose details of facilities used by the CCP to detain millions of innocent people.
China’s oppression of Xinjiang’s Uyghurs: a visual history
Today, Xinjiang’s Uyghurs are subject to a comprehensive, targeted campaign of surveillance and control. According to leading researchers and human rights groups, as many as 1.5 million have been placed in concentration camps. This ongoing program of repression follows decades of tension between the Uyghurs and the Chinese government. So, how did we get here?
Uyghurs for Sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang
This report reveals how the forced transfers of Uyghurs to factories across China are linked to the supply chains of dozens of international brands.
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.
Life In Xinjiang's Reeducation Camp 'No Different Than Prison'
Muratkhan Aidarkhanuly and his wife worked for the government in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang for about 30 years before retiring and moving to Kazakhstan to be closer to their grandchildren. In October 2017, however, Aidarkhanuly ran into trouble with the Chinese authorities when he went back to sell the family home. His passport was seized and he was placed under house arrest.
A Uighurs’ History of China
It is impossible to make sense of the current crisis in Xinjiang without an understanding of the distinctive trajectory of Uighur history, which is intertwined with that of the regional great power, China.
‘I took a business trip to China. Then I got shackled to a chair.’ The heartbreaking stories of Uyghurs in exile
In Turkey, the Star spoke to Uyghurs-in-exile including an internment camp survivor. These are their stories, in their own words.
“There was no learning at all.” - Xinjiang camp eyewitness account
Xinjiang camp eyewitness Nurlan Kokteubai gives a first-person account of his experience. “The document says that the goal is for the learners to study government policies, the national language, law, and vocational skills. These are lies. None of these was available. It was just a prison.”
China Uighurs: Detainees 'free' after 'graduating', official says
A senior Chinese official has said that all of the people sent to detention centres in the western region of Xinjiang have now been released. Regional government chairman Shohrat Zakir told reporters those held in what Beijing say are "re-education camps" had now "graduated".
Why many in China support Beijing's policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong
Over an uncountable number of official statements and state media news reports, Beijing has described both Uyghurs and the demonstrators in Hong Kong as "separatists", who are seeking to "undermine China's sovereignty". This has created a huge stir in mainland China, where people take the subject of the country's sovereignty very seriously. Many in China support human rights and democracy, however support for Beijing's often contradictory actions remains vast — so why is that the case?