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:
Coercive Labor and Forced Displacement in Xinjiang’s Cross-Regional Labor Transfer Program
This report provides new evidence from Chinese sources that Xinjiang’s labor transfers to other regions or provinces in China meet the forced labor definition of the International Labor Organization (ILO). The report develops a process-focused evaluation model for evaluating coercion at each stage of the labor transfer program. The Nankai Report, along with other Chinese academic sources, indicates that labor transfers are not just serving economic purposes, but are implemented with the intention to forcibly displace ethnic minority populations from their heartlands, intentionally reducing their population density, and tearing apart homogeneous communities.
Part 3: Explaining Variation in the Growth and Decline of Detention Facilities across Xinjiang
This report explores trends in the growth and decline of nighttime lighting over detention facilities across Xinjiang. It reveals evidence to suggest that long-term prisons have become a greater priority than reeducation centers, helping chart the current trajectory of China’s widespread detention of Uyghur and ethnic minority populations in the region.
Part 2: Have Any of Xinjiang’s Detention Facilities Closed?
This report, the second in a three-part series, employs a novel empirical approach to systematically assess the current operating status of known detention facilities in Xinjiang using nighttime lighting. This analysis provides new, empirical evidence to suggest that the overwhelming majority of detention facilities in Xinjiang remain active, operational, and in many cases, still under construction – despite Chinese claims to the contrary.
Part 1: Investigating the Growth of Detention Facilities in Xinjiang Using Nighttime Lighting
In this three-part investigation, RAND researchers use nighttime lighting in Xinjiang to capture the speed and scope with which China’s detention campaign escalated beginning in 2016.
Between Dictatorship and Democracy. Life of Sairagul Sauytbay in Sweden
Sairagul Sauytbay talks about what she had to endure in the “political re-education camps” in Xinjiang. She escaped political repression in China in 2018 and crossed the border with Kazakhstan illegally, has been living in Sweden for a year and a half, where the Swedish government granted her political asylum.
The Roots of Cultural Genocide in Xinjiang
The notion that a genocide is underway in the twenty-first century seems outlandish. But whatever the merits of the term, the evidence of the atrocities that China has committed against Uyghurs is undeniable.
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.
China's 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.
Trapped in the System: Experiences of Uyghur Detention in Post-2015 Xinjiang
This report presents the results of in-depth interviews conducted with eight individuals with recent direct experience inside detention facilities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
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.
Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang
(Originally published November 2006, revised February 2021) Eurasian Crossroads is an essential resource for anyone seeking to learn about the complex historical context of the genocide taking place in Xinjiang today. James Millward, who is widely regarded as the leading historian of Chinese Central Asia, provides an accessible-yet-thorough examination of the various peoples and empires that have called the region home.
China’s Brutality Cannot Be Ignored - Biden must push back against the persecution of the Uyghur minority
For the Biden administration to fulfill its pledge to “lead the democratic world,” it must urgently address what is among the gravest human rights crises of our times. The Chinese government’s campaign—assisted by mass surveillance using cutting-edge electronic and biological technology—is not just a horror in its own right. It serves as a cautionary tale about tech-driven and racially profiled oppression that we must stand against.
‘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.
International Criminal Responsibility for Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide Against the Uyghur Population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
The Essex Court Chambers was instructed by the Global Legal Action Network, the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur Human Rights Project to provide a written Opinion on the characterisation, under international criminal law, of acts carried out by the Chinese government in respect of the Uyghur people living in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (“XUAR”) in China. This Opinion addresses the potential substantive liability of certain individuals, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (“Rome Statute”) and the applicability of the United Kingdom’s “Magnitsky sanctions” regime to those individuals.
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.
‘Only when you, your children, and your grandchildren become Chinese’: Life after Xinjiang detainment
“They said there was a document sent from above, from the administrative center, and that they were acting based on that document. They said no one can change the document since it was sent from the Central Committee. They said that the current system would not change until all Muslim nationalities would be extinct.”
We Found The Factories Inside China’s Mass Internment Camps
China has built more than 100 new facilities in Xinjiang where it can not only lock people up, but also force them to work in dedicated factory buildings right on site, BuzzFeed News can reveal based on government records, interviews, and hundreds of satellite images.
Who’s trying to weaken a US bill targeting forced labor in China?
A coalition of groups calling for an end to the repression of Uyghurs in China is demanding a number of prominent companies come clean about their lobbying and other actions to alter or weaken a proposed bill targeting imports made with Uyghur forced labor. Among the companies it has asked to publicly disclose their activities are Apple, Nike, Walmart, Adidas, Gap, and several others.
‘Will they let us live?’ Inside Xinjiang, survivors of China’s internment camps speak
On a visit to Xinjiang, reporters met with Uighurs across the region who spoke of their imprisonment, fear and life in the region.
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.