For nearly a decade, Uyghurs in China have been living in an extreme surveillance state. In the last few weeks, they have not been able to join the demonstrations in China against excessive COVID surveillance and lockdown policies, despite being the worst-affected group, and the victims of the Ürümchi fire that sparked the protests.
"The Backstreets" is a masterful work of stream-of-consciousness fiction that has recently become available outside China, the first Uyghur-language novel to be translated into English.
A citizen in eastern China describes how Uyghur “mouths have been sealed” over the past five years.
Ma Xingrui, the new party secretary of Xinjiang, is tasked with repairing the damage left by his predecessor, Chen Quanguo, who initiated the largest internment of a religious minority since World War II. But he will also need to execute Beijing’s new policy of thwarting what it calls the “two plots.”
The camp system in Xinjiang — the largest internment of a religious minority since World War II — is the first to employ a comprehensive digital surveillance system across an entire population, a "super panoptic" that uses automated, real-time assessments of massive amounts of data to sort populations based on their racial phenotypes and digital records.
This essay is adapted from Darren Byler’s forthcoming book, Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City, published by Duke University Press (December 2021).
State policies in education are forcing Uyghur children to grow up in non-Muslim, Mandarin-speaking environments. Uyghur culture is being lost as a result.
Nurali, after memorizing the Quran, brought immense pride to his family. But back home in Xinjiang, his mother, who financed his studies, was accused of abetting "terrorism," and sentenced to 16.5 years in prison.
For 16 hours, people in a Clubhouse room called “Is there a concentration camp in Xinjiang?” spoke freely, centering the discussion on those most harmed by state violence. Even while it was happening, the conversation felt historic — and worth preserving.