Read on Twitter
THREAD: Our cover this week is about the persecution of China's Uyghurs. In our editorial, we urge governments and others to do more about this crime against humanity https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/10/17/the-persecution-of-the-uyghurs-is-a-crime-against-humanity
Systematic efforts to suppress Uyghurs go far beyond the camps. Local documents (shared with us by @adrianzenz) in 1 county show nearly 10% of children in grades 1-6 lost at least one parent to detention. Many children are put in boarding schools. My story https://www.economist.com/china/2020/10/17/how-xinjiangs-gulag-tears-families-apart
The local documents reveal a chilling terminology for children who've lost one or both parents to detention: "single-hardship" and "double-hardship." Extrapolating the data across Xinjiang implies as many as 250,000 children under 15 have lost one or both parents to detention
Govt documents suggest a bureaucracy racing to cope with children orphaned by the state, expanding hundreds of Xinjiang schools to board students (880,000 are boarded now, up 383,000 from 2017), and instructing educators to watch "hardship" children for psychological problems
The damage done is hard to fathom. Zumrat Dawut, who spent 2 months in a camp, told me of her children's terror that they might say something at school--where they were questioned each Friday about their home life--that would send her back to the camps https://www.economist.com/china/2020/10/17/how-xinjiangs-gulag-tears-families-apart
And even in exile, Uyghurs do not feel entirely free. The Economist's sister magazine, 1843, writes of the fears of the Uyghur diaspora in London: that they are being watched by the CCP, that things they say might endanger their relatives back home https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/10/15/if-i-speak-out-they-will-torture-my-family-voices-of-uyghurs-in-exile
Our stories build on an impressive body of work--by journalists, scholars, human rights groups and exiles--thoroughly documenting the abuses in Xinjiang. As we make clear in our cover editorial, it's past time for more people, and governments, to speak up https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/10/17/the-persecution-of-the-uyghurs-is-a-crime-against-humanity
In this paper @adrianzenz explains in detail the files he obtained and the data in them that helped us form a clearer picture of the devastation wrought on Uyghur families and the impact on children https://adrianzenz.medium.com/story-45d07b25bcad
