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THREAD: Following our cover this week on Uyghurs, I wanted to highlight scholars, journalists, activists and exiles who have helped expose and explain what is happening in Xinjiang, from the camps to population control to the diminishing of Uyghur identity https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/10/17/the-persecution-of-the-uyghurs-is-a-crime-against-humanity
Early work exposing the camps in 2017 was done by Uyghur exile journalists at Radio Free Asia https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/training-camps-09112017154343.html and by @SophieHRW & @wang_maya at Human Rights Watch. HRW made this call to free detainees in Sept 2017, with receipts from state media https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/10/china-free-xinjiang-political-education-detainees
The camps have since been laid bare in detainee testimony, satellite imagery & analysis of CCP docs/media, in works by: @gerryshih then at AP https://apnews.com/article/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b, @emilyrauhala at WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/new-evidence-emerges-that-china-is-forcing-muslims-into-reeducation-camps/2018/08/10/1d6d2f64-8dce-11e8-9b0d-749fb254bc3d_story.html, @adrianzenz (1 paper here: https://www.jpolrisk.com/wash-brains-cleanse-hearts/) and...
These 3 reports in 2019-20 expanded our knowledge of the camps: by @BethanyAllenEbr & ICIJ https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/exposed-chinas-operating-manuals-for-mass-internment-and-arrest-by-algorithm/; by @austinramzy @ChuBailiang at NYT https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html & by @meghara @alisonkilling & Christo Buschek at BuzzFeed https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/china-new-internment-camps-xinjiang-uighurs-muslims
UN human rights experts called out China over the camps in 2018 https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-rights-un/u-n-says-it-has-credible-reports-that-china-holds-million-uighurs-in-secret-camps-idUKKBN1KV23P. Gene Bunin's @shahitbiz has been an essential resource. @Nrg8000 @fryan & team at @ASPI_ICPC have done incredible work like this https://xjdp.aspi.org.au/map/
On pressing Uyghurs into forced labor, @annafifield at WaPo wrote this https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-compels-uighurs-to-work-in-shoe-factory-that-supplies-nike/2020/02/28/ebddf5f4-57b2-11ea-8efd-0f904bdd8057_story.html which builds on work by, among others, @xu_xiuzhong @jleibold @KelseyMunro @Nrg8000 https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale and by Amy Lehr and Mariefaye Bechrakis @csis https://www.csis.org/analysis/connecting-dots-xinjiang-forced-labor-forced-assimilation-and-western-supply-chains
Many scholars have been helpful to me in my own reporting on Uyghurs over the years, from my time in China well before the camps to now. One is @GroseTimothy. His latest explores how the CCP's forcible assimilation of Uyghurs penetrates into their homes https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2020.1789686
. @RianThum has written definitively on the CCP's destruction of Uyghur historical and holy places (while at the same time transforming Uyghur spaces into tourist attractions) https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/08/24/the-spatial-cleansing-of-xinjiang-mazar-desecration-in-context/
Great list here of books on Uyghur culture, history etc by @GroseTimothy, @Rachel_A_Harris @robertsreport, @EricTSchluessel, @ReasonablyRagin, @Dave_Brophy, Yan Sun, @JimMillward. (I recently read Roberts who shows how CCP exploited the "war on terror") https://twitter.com/RianThum/status/1318224601969774592?s=20
Speaking of @JimMillward, he wrote this magisterial essay on the situation https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/02/07/reeducating-xinjiangs-muslims/. And after her visit @j_smithfinley evoked the parallels between "1984" and "a Xinjiang now in the grip of “de-extremification” and “thought liberation”' https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/now-we-dont-talk-anymore
Read @j_smithfinley on the "cleansing of Xinjiang". She visited in 2018 and saw official language evoking "1984": 'The parallels between that masterpiece and a Xinjiang now in the grip of “de-extremification” and “thought liberation” are astonishing.' https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/now-we-dont-talk-anymore
It is difficult to pick just one essay by @dtbyler so I'll provide three. This on the CCP program to place Han "relatives" in Uyghur homes https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/26/china-nightmare-homestay-xinjiang-uighur-monitor/ this chilling piece on the uses of technology to control https://logicmag.io/china/ghost-world/ and this https://livingotherwise.com/2019/07/22/adam-hunerven-capitalism-and-terror-in-northwest-china/
There's a lot of great work on on dystopian uses of tech in Xinjiang, including this by @ChuBailiang & @paulmozur https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html and this fantastic report by @wang_maya at Human Rights Watch https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/05/02/chinas-algorithms-repression/reverse-engineering-xinjiang-police-mass
UN experts on human rights have repeatedly called for action, here their latest statement in June https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26006&LangID=E Last month @HRW and more than 300 other orgs called for an international mechanism to address human rights violations in China https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/09/global-call-international-human-rights-monitoring-mechanisms-china
More governments are speaking up too, and fewer are publicly backing China's treatment of Uyghurs despite intense pressure from the CCP. Some details in this thread https://twitter.com/gadyepstein/status/1313504870733938688?s=20
I mentioned the brave work of Uyghur exiles at RFA (a story of mine on that https://www.economist.com/china/2019/10/24/to-suppress-news-of-xinjiangs-gulag-china-threatens-uighurs-abroad) but must stress the bravery in the Uyghur diaspora to speak out, and of Kazakhs who were detained and got out of PRC. An early story (in Russian) from 2017 https://rus.azattyq.org/a/kitay-kazakhi-davlenie-politicheskoye-vospitanie/28535011.html
John Phipps wrote for sister mag 1843 on fear in the Uyghur diaspora of retaliation against family https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/10/15/if-i-speak-out-they-will-torture-my-family-voices-of-uyghurs-in-exile. Zumrat Dawut, whom I interviewed for this story (along with unnamed others), has seen her brother put on video in PRC to dispute her https://www.economist.com/china/2020/10/17/how-xinjiangs-gulag-tears-families-apart
This thread only scratches the surface but I've got to stop somewhere. Apologies to all whom I didn't cite. For more, a friend made this google doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oaJAqOlhfDiPwZK6PKPEqHihXg_zYp80-IO0oqHpuCk/edit?usp=sharing, and @UyghurProject has this extensive bibliography compiled by @Magnus_Fiskesjo https://uhrp.org/featured-articles/chinas-re-education-concentration-camps-xinjiang
