The coronavirus in Xinjiang — ‘auxiliary police to visit each household’
There have been fewer than 100 reported cases of COVID-19 in Xinjiang, but Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the region remain worried: not only about the threat of the coronavirus, but also about oppressive tactics used by authorities determined to keep people compliant and indoors. “Over the past decade, the Chinese state has shown Uyghurs and Kazakhs over and over again that their lives matter the least,” Darren Byler writes in this month’s Xinjiang Column for The China Project.
According to a directive issued by state authorities in Kashgar on January 26…local neighborhood watch units were to “organize the auxiliary police to visit each household to ensure its safety, carefully implement grid management and blanket survey measures, and conduct comprehensive investigations of personnel with exposure history in Wuhan” throughout the region.
—Anthony Tao
