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:
The Xinjiang Papers: An Introduction
This report, submitted to the Uyghur Tribunal, contains a detailed overview of the Xinjiang Papers, a cache of leaked - and mostly classified - government documents from the PRC.
Uyghur Genocide - House of Lords Debate
The House of Lords debated reported remarks by the British Foreign Secretary that a genocide is underway against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, China, on Thursday 25 November.
Genocidal processes: social death in Xinjiang
This paper builds on critical genocide studies literature to historically contextualize China’s “fusion” policy used to justify its policies of extralegal internment camps and inter-generational separation in Xinjiang.
Laundering Cotton: How Xinjiang Cotton is Obscured in International Supply Chains
This report explores how, at the same time as Xinjiang cotton has come to be associated with human rights abuses, forced-labor-linked cotton goods from the Uyghur Region wend their way into international supply chains.
UK Government refuses to declare atrocities in Xinjiang a genocide
Today, the Foreign Affairs Committee publishes the Government Response to its report “Never Again: The UK’s Responsibility to Act on Atrocities in Xinjiang and Beyond”. The Government states that it will not “make determinations in relation to genocide” in response to the Committee’s recommendation to “accept Parliament’s view that Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang are suffering genocide and crimes against humanity”.
‘Surveillance’ doesn’t begin to describe what Beijing is doing to Uyghurs
Researcher and writer Vicky Xiuzhong Xu talks about the way the Chinese state has penetrated every aspect of life in Xinjiang — and targeted her, thousands of miles away, in Australia.
How China’s past shapes Xi's thinking - and his view of the world
Heightened tensions with Taiwan have focused attention on China, with many wondering where President Xi Jinping sees his country on the world stage. Perhaps the past can provide some clues, writes Rana Mitter, a history professor at Oxford University.
The architecture of repression: Unpacking Xinjiang’s governance
This report is a part of a larger online project which can be found on the Xinjiang Data Project website. The project maps and analyses the governance mechanisms employed by the Chinese party-state in Xinjiang from 2014 to 2021 within the context of the region’s ongoing human rights crisis. The authors have located and scrutinised thousands of Chinese-language sources, including leaked police records and government budget documents never before published. For policymakers, this report will provide an evidence base to inform policy responses including possible sanctions. For the general public and anyone whose interests are linked to Xinjiang and China more broadly, this project can inform risk analysis and ethical considerations.
Xinjiang's Architecture of Repression
This chart maps the key bureaucratic offices involved in designing, coordinating and implementing the Chinese Communist Party’s policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China.
Winter Olympics: IOC says China human rights ‘not within’ remit
A senior member of the International Olympic Committee has swatted aside suggestions that China should be challenged over its human rights record before the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
Terror & Tourism: Xinjiang eases its grip, but fear remains
Four years after Beijing launched a brutal crackdown that swept up to a million or more Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities into detention camps and prisons, its control of Xinjiang has entered a new era.
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.
Activists Call For Release of Uyghur Scholar on 7th Anniversary of His Jailing
Human rights activists on Thursday called on China to release jailed Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti, sentenced seven years ago to life in prison for “separatism,” for his advocacy work in Xinjiang.
China's ambassador Zheng Zeguang banned from UK Parliament
China's ambassador to the UK has been told he cannot come to Parliament while sanctions remain in place against a number of MPs and peers. The Chinese embassy said it was a "despicable and cowardly" decision that would harm both countries' interests.
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.
The Uyghur Tribunal - Hearing Session 2
The Uyghur Tribunal was launched in September 2020 as an independent people’s tribunal to investigate ‘ongoing atrocities and possible Genocide’ against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslim Populations. The Uyghur Tribunal, which has no powers of sanction or enforcement, will confine itself to reviewing evidence in order to reach an impartial and considered judgment on whether international crimes are proved to have been committed by the PRC. There will be two sets of Hearings, at which witnesses will present live evidence. These will be open to the public and streamed live. The first hearings took place between 4 and 7 June 2021. Click here to view recorded livestreams of the second set of hearings from 10 to 13 September 2021.
Genocide Designations Aren’t Enough to Stop Mass Atrocities
While survivors, relatives and diaspora communities have long sought to draw attention to the systematic and widespread violence in Xinjiang, states, multilateral organizations, corporations and many civil society groups have only recently begun considering their response to these grave violations. For more than a year, much of the public debate on China’s treatment of Uyghurs has focused not on what can be done in the face of such brutality, but how that brutality should be described: Is this a genocide or not? Concrete efforts to end the violence—or even meaningful debates on what those efforts should look like—have been harder to spot.
Criminal Law and Deprivation of Liberty in Xinjiang
This paper delves into official statistics and Chinese law to investigate the use of criminal proceedings as a tool of repression in Xinjiang try and understand how the criminal law is being used to detain Uyghurs.
China’s Surveillance State: A Global Project
Researchers reveal the global reach of Huawei's surveillance tools and uncover the U.S. companies that facilitate China's surveillance state.
The Experiment Podcast: A Uyghur Teen’s Life After Escaping Genocide
The Uyghur refugee Aséna Tahir Izgil escaped the genocide of her people in China. Now she’s trying to be a teenager in America.