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:
‘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?
Mapping more of China's tech giants: AI and surveillance
This public database maps companies and organisations to visualise a holistic picture of the increasingly global reach of China’s tech giants, including companies working in the artificial intelligence (AI) and surveillance tech sectors.
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.
Coordinates of Concentration Camps, Prisons and Labour Camps
This dataset, available to view on Google Earth, identifies a number of suspected concentration camps, prisons, and labor camps in East Turkistan (what China calls the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region”).
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.
Han Teachers in Xinjiang: Save Uyghur Children!
Bitter Winter met with four ethnic Han teachers who work in elementary and middle schools in various parts of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. They recounted in detail how the CCP is repressing Uyghurs, even the very young, by prohibiting them from speaking their native language, destroying books, and forcing children to swear allegiance to the state that incarcerates their parents just for being Muslim.
Abortions, IUDs and Sexual Humiliation: Muslim Women Who Fled China for Kazakhstan Recount Ordeals
The women have found refuge from Chinese authorities across the border in Kazakhstan, their ancestral homeland. But they remain haunted by the stories of abuse they carry with them.
From camps to prisons: Xinjiang’s next great human rights catastrophe
Following a year and a half of the incarceration of millions in police detention centers and de facto concentration camps, the Chinese authorities have unmistakably changed course in the fall of 2018.
Xi Jinping’s Quotes Replace the Ten Commandments in Churches
The Ten Commandments are the basis of Christian moral code, an essential part of believers’ life throughout the world. But in atheist China, they have become an eyesore for the country’s dictator, and are eliminated from places of worship.
How companies profit from forced labor in Xinjiang
Factories of Turkic Muslim internment, part of China’s reeducation camp system, are subsidized and directed by the state, and employ many former detainees at a fraction of minimum wage. Companies, both Chinese and foreign, are taking advantage.
Uyghur love in a time of interethnic marriage
Since 2018, there has been a notable rise in articles promoting marriage between Han men and Uyghur women. At a time when many people across China think of Uyghur men as potential terrorists and Uyghur women as potential fashion models, a new interethnic sexual politics is being institutionalized across Xinjiang.
Securitizing Xinjiang: Police Recruitment, Informal Policing and Ethnic Minority Co-optation
Following a series of high-profile attacks in Beijing, Kunming and Urumqi by Uyghur militants, the Chinese party-state declared a war on terror in 2014. Since then, China's Xinjiang region has witnessed an unprecedented build-up of what we describe as a multi-tiered police force, turning it into one of the most heavily policed regions in the world. This article investigates the securitization of Xinjiang through an analysis of official police recruitment documents.