China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang
Backgrounder
China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang
More than a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region. The reeducation camps are just one part of the government’s crackdown on Uyghurs.
A Uyghur man works at his shop in Kashgar in the Xinjiang region. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Written By
Lindsay Maizland
Updated
Last updated September 22, 2022 11:30 am (EST)
Summary
- About eleven million Uyghurs—a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group—live in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
- The Chinese government has imprisoned more than one million people since 2017 and subjected those not detained to intense surveillance, religious restrictions, forced labor, and forced sterilizations.
- The United States determined that China’s actions constitute genocide, while a UN report said they could amount to crimes against humanity.
Introduction
The Chinese government has reportedly arbitrarily detained more than a million Muslims in reeducation camps since 2017. Most of the people who have been detained are Uyghur, a predominantly Turkic-speaking ethnic group primarily in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang. Beyond the detentions, Uyghurs in the region have been subjected to intense surveillance, forced labor, and involuntary sterilizations, among other rights abuses.
The United States and several other foreign governments have described China’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide, while the UN human rights office said that the violations could constitute crimes against humanity. Chinese officials have said that they have not infringed on Uyghurs’ rights and claimed that they closed the reeducation camps in 2019. However, international journalists and researchers have documented an ongoing system of mass detention throughout the region using satellite images, individual testimonies, and leaked Chinese government documents.
Related
Religion in China
by
CFR.org Editors
A More Strategic German Foreign Policy?
by
Liana Fix and
Caroline Kapp
When did mass detentions of Muslims start?
An estimated eight hundred thousand to two million Uyghurs and other Muslims, including ethnic Kazakhs and Uzbeks, have been detained since 2017, according to international researchers and
U.S. government officials [PDF]. The Chinese government calls the facilities “vocational education and training centers;” the most common terms used by international media organizations and researchers are reeducation camps, internment camps, and detention camps. Some activists describe them as concentration camps.
Outside of the camps, the eleven million Uyghurs living in Xinjiang—officially called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region—have continued to suffer from a decades-long crackdown by Chinese authorities.
View attachment 14915
Experts estimate that reeducation efforts started in Xinjiang in 2014 and were drastically expanded in 2017. Beginning that year, they documented the construction of new reeducation camps and expansion of existing facilities for mass detention. Reuters journalists, observing satellite imagery, found that
thirty-nine of the camps almost tripled in size between April 2017 and August 2018; they covered a total area roughly the size of 140 soccer fields. Similarly, analyzing local and national budgets over the past few years, Germany-based Xinjiang expert Adrian Zenz found that construction spending on security-related facilities in Xinjiang increased by
20 billion yuan (around $2.96 billion) in 2017.
In late 2019, Xinjiang’s governor said that people detained in the reeducation camps had “graduated.” Journalists found that several camps were indeed closed. But the following year, researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
identified [PDF] more than 380 suspected detention facilities using satellite images. They found that China refashioned some lower-security reeducation camps into formal detention centers or prisons; expanded existing detention centers; and constructed new, high-security detention centers throughout Xinjiang. (Chinese officials have said that ASPI is an anti-China tool funded by Australia and the United States.) Instead of detaining people in reeducation camps, authorities have increasingly used the formal justice system to imprison people for years. In 2022, Human Rights Watch reported that
half a million people had been prosecuted since 2017, according to Xinjiang government figures. The Associated Press found that in one county, an estimated
one in twenty-five people had been sentenced to prison on terrorism-related charges, all of them Uyghurs.
Hundreds of Detention Sites Across Xinjiang
More than a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region. The reeducation camps are just one part of the government’s crackdown on Uyghurs.
www.cfr.org