The Uyghurs: The Genocide the World Forgot

There is a genocide happening in China. The government in Beijing is behind it. The following contains descriptions of war crimes, genocide, torture, and sexual assault on a scale difficult to imagine in the 21st century.

This is the genocide that the world forgot. The Uyghurs are a predominantly Turkic ethnic group of central Asian descent. They are Sunni Muslims, one of the larger Islamic minorities in China and one of the few recognised minorities by the Chinese state.

There are between 10 and 12 million Uyghurs living in their native Xinjiang region. They have a lot of cultural, religious, and societal similarities to Kazakhs, as well as a burgeoning international community. Uyghurs have a sordid history with the Chinese state and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) specifically, having clashed with the CCP on several occasions throughout the 20th century.

There are historical calls from Uyghur separatists to declare independence from China, putting them at odds with the government in Beijing.

Xinjiang: The Strategic Region Beijing Refuses to Release

Xinjiang is a large, mostly rural region in north-western China. It borders four of the stans to its west: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and a tiny sliver of Afghanistan. To its east is Mongolia, and to the north, Russia.

Much of it is very flat, in keeping with the Asian steppe in which it is located. It is also known as East Turkestan, Uyghurstan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or XUAR for short. The local authorities in Xinjiang, like anywhere else in China, are a part of the Chinese Communist Party.

The CCP Committee Secretary, generally a member of the Han Chinese ethnic group, outranks the XUAR Government Chairman, always a Uyghur. That means that Beijing effectively controls every aspect of what happens in Xinjiang. The region is roughly 2,700 miles from their capital.

The distance between them is equivalent to parliament in Westminster making decisions for the people in Baghdad. The region is historically, strategically, and economically important, nationally and internationally. Xinjiang produces 9% of the globe’s aluminium, one fifth of the cotton, and is rich in natural resources, making it vital for Chinese manufacturing and trade.

All of these factors, plus its proximity to many central Asian nations, mark it as a trading hub for Western China. This explains why the CCP retains such strong interest in a land almost 3,000 kilometres from Beijing. Many, including warlords, dynasties, and republics, have historically laid claim to the region, including a Uyghur independence movement; however, it was taken over by the Chinese Communist Party during the original reign of Chairman Mao Zedong and has remained a part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) ever since.

The CCP have always promoted Han resettlement in Xinjiang, causing tensions to rise among the Uyghur population. When Han resettlement was incentivised by Beijing again in the 1990s, it sparked a violent campaign that would lead to one of the most brutal human rights crackdowns since the Second World War.

Being Made the Enemy: Uyghur Violence and Beijing’s Merciless Response

Between the 1990s and 2010s, there have been a series of Uyghur terror attacks within China, due in part to the state-sponsored resettlement in majority Uyghur areas. The CCP’s response to extremism has been consistent, establishing a ‘strike hard’ anti-terrorism campaign as early as 1996, a campaign it sees through in Xinjiang to this day. In July of 2009, riots in the XUAR’s regional capital of Urumqi saw clashes between Han Chinese and Uyghurs, necessitating the Chinese military to step in and quell the violence.

According to The Guardian, 200 people lost their lives, most of which were Han. The Guardian also reported on the July 2011 attacks in the city of Kashgar, where over several days, stabbings and bombings occurred, killing 11 people. The BBC reported that on October 28th, 2013, the infamous Tiananmen Square was car-bombed by Uyghur separatists.

In 2014, the BBC were also present when they reported on the Kunming knife attacks, where 31 people were killed and over 100 more were injured. Beijing is fearful of a truly autonomous, or even independent Xinjiang, owed to the strategic importance of the region and the mutual distrust between the Uyghurs and the Chinese government. The CCP needed to quash the political violence before it got out of hand.

All Uyghurs in China were tarred with the same brush of suspicion by the Chinese state as potential terrorists and extremists. The revelation that several hundred Uyghurs had travelled to Syria to fight against the Chinese-backed Al-Assad regime only fuelled Beijing’s suspicions. According to Reuters, Beijing claims the number of Uyghurs in Syria, while under speculation, could be as high as 5,000.

Many Uyghurs were drawn into Syria via Turkey with promises from militia recruiters that they would return to China and liberate their people. However, despite these promises, there have been few Jihadist attacks on Chinese soil and none linked to Jihadi-Uyghur groups from Syria. Furthermore, due to the chaotic nature of the Syrian conflict, Uyghurs in Syria are difficult to track and therefore the fate of the Uyghurs who went to Syria is largely unknown.

According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), of the Uyghurs they spoke to who had fought in Syria, common reasons for leaving the country were the wish to not fight another people’s war, and the belief that Islamic militant forces were unlikely to back an insurgency against China. In 2014, PRC President Xi Jinping visited Xinjiang in solidarity after the upsurge in violence. According to documents leaked to the New York Times, he directed local officials to respond with ‘absolutely no mercy’ towards the Uyghurs.

From this moment there was a fundamental shift in the way that Uyghurs would be treated by Beijing, and whilst plans to persecute the Uyghurs go back as far as the 1990s, 2014 represented the year Chinese state action against the Uyghurs escalated significantly.

Xinjiang’s Perfect Police State: Surveillance, Arrests, and Social Control

Human Rights Watch asserts that an overlapping network of local and national ‘rules’ have been enforced in Xinjiang, resulting in what political journalist Geoffrey Cain refers to as ‘the perfect police state’ and the total subjugation of the region. At first, it was on a smaller scale, with local governments implementing specific edicts, such as a ban on headscarves and long beards for ‘security’ purposes, as reported by CNN in 2015. Soon it expanded.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded in 2021 that there were laws enacted in Xinjiang banning the religious instruction of children, prohibition on materials that ‘undermine national unity’, and de facto bans on religious gatherings. In 2016, the state officially pushed its way into people’s homes with its ‘Becoming Family’ programme. According to HRW’s landmark 2021 Uyghur report, Chinese state officials would enter Uyghur homes in Xinjiang to stay overnight and sometimes longer, under the guise of introducing ‘new relatives’ to Uyghur families.

HRW states this was for internal surveillance of families believed to be a threat to the state. The veil of suspicion that cascades over Xinjiang applies almost ubiquitously, and especially to those who make contact with the world outside of China. Uyghurs are deemed suspicious for travelling outside of the country and can be arrested upon their return, despite Human Rights Watch’s assertion that this is not a violation of domestic Chinese law.

According to Amnesty International, making international calls on the phone will cause a Chinese state official to come knocking on your door. Adrian Zenz, Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, had the Xinjiang Police Files leaked to him by an anonymous individual with access to Chinese state documents. The Xinjiang Police Files, the largest cache of official documents pertaining to Xinjiang ever leaked, show that individuals can be punished for alleged crimes that took place years ago.

According to the BBC, a woman was sentenced in the 2010s for reading a Quran as a child in the 1970s. However, the arbitrary arrests are not always necessarily related to Islam; the same BBC report stated that one elderly man was allegedly sent to a detention camp for not paying his water bill on time. Western governmental bodies, such as the UK’s House of Lords and the US Congress, agree that there is a lack of due process when Uyghurs are arrested.

Human Rights Watch’s 2021 report states that Uyghurs are not allowed to speak to lawyers and are usually not told what crime they have committed; due to this, they often do not know how long their sentences are, and punishments can range from lofty fines to years in prison. The same report claims some Uyghurs are convinced to go to ‘re-education’ camps, with many being told they will serve mere days; however, in reality, Uyghurs are incarcerated in camps for weeks, months, or even indefinitely. It also asserts the Chinese state has racked up millions in fines that Uyghurs have paid to stay out of jail, and that Uyghurs unable to pay the expensive fines are detained.

Those who are released still become part of China’s surveillance apparatus. The BBC reports that Uyghur passports are often surrendered for ‘safe keeping’ by the state when detained, whilst Radio Free Asia states ID checks are mandatory for Uyghurs to get through the checkpoints set up all over Xinjiang, severely restricting travel within the XUAR. In a separate article, RFA explains that the state will use its extensive surveillance network and digitally constructed profiles of Uyghurs to monitor them, often re-arresting them at a later date in line with fresh crackdowns.

The Surveillance Apparatus: Facial Recognition, GPS Tracking, and DNA Collection

Xinjiang has one of the most secure and expansive surveillance networks in the world. Beijing has spent a fortune to be a pioneer of mass surveillance technology and is using the full force of it in Xinjiang. According to the BBC and New York Times, among regular police and road checkpoints are CCTV cameras equipped with facial recognition and artificial intelligence technology.

Human Rights Watch attests that Xinjiang CCTV cameras can also scan the number plates of cars. Cars themselves are an avenue for surveillance. It is widely reported by the BBC, the Guardian, and others that in 2017, authorities in the Bayingolin region of Xinjiang passed a law requiring cars to have GPS trackers installed for real-time monitoring.

Those without trackers would not be sold fuel for their cars. It is currently unknown whether these laws will or have been expanded to the whole of Xinjiang. There are further technological infringements on Uyghur privacy; Human Rights Watch claims an app is used by the CCP to monitor Uyghur behaviour, including electricity use, international phone calls, and even how much people use their front door.

Those not using their phones enough are treated with suspicion for trying to evade the state’s surveillance efforts. The BBC revealed that some Uyghurs have been arrested for listening to Islamic lectures on their phones, whilst stories from Business Insider show how Uyghur defectors are told by their families to break contact forever or are simply blocked one day, and never heard from again. These are indicators of a people who are aware their every move is being watched.

According to Radio Free Asia, mandatory health checks are carried out on Uyghurs in Xinjiang in order to collect DNA samples. In 2017, The Independent reported Xinjiang purchased $8.7 million worth of DNA scanners, enough to analyse millions of samples a year. Document No. 44, a Chinese regional public security directive partially leaked by the Associated Press (AP), instructed officials to ‘comprehensively collect three-dimensional portraits, voiceprints, DNA and fingerprints.’

It is very apparent to Uyghurs in Xinjiang that Beijing is building a database of its citizens. The Xinjiang Police Files claimed that China’s security infrastructure in Xinjiang rapidly expanded in 2017, as the XUAR hired 40 times more police per capita than the province of Guangdong, which has 5 times the population. Uyghur expert Adrian Zenz describes the police presence as unprecedented. 2017 is commonly thought to be the year that the largest crackdown of Uyghurs began.

According to Chinese government data, criminal arrests in Xinjiang accounted for 21% of the country’s total in 2017, despite the region having about 1.5% of the population. Alim Seytoff, director of the Uyghur language service at Radio Free Asia, reported to NPR in 2018 that Uyghurs in Urumqi were being graded for their behaviour on a 100-point scale, likely an early-stage experiment for the rollout of China’s country-wide social credit system. Seytoff said Uyghurs lost points for things like praying or having relatives abroad; those who scored below 50 were deemed ‘unsafe’ and detained.

According to the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), even Uyghurs who do escape China are not safe; the CCP tracks down their family members still in China, using the implied threat to their families to scare victims into silence, or return to Xinjiang for arrest.

The Camps: Mass Detention, Forced Labour, and a Dystopian Hellscape

Human rights groups and countries across the globe accuse the Chinese Government of detaining over a million Uyghurs against their will in a network of re-education camps and prisons. The Council on Foreign Relations, a leading geopolitical thinktank, claims the vast majority of them were never charged with a crime. The arbitrary detention of a million people with no due process constitutes a breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and qualifies as a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Of the 30 articles that make up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, China’s actions in Xinjiang against the Uyghur people and other minorities break 27 of them. The Council on Foreign Relations also states that throughout Xinjiang is a complex network of hundreds of detention centres housing those million Uyghurs, and that whilst China initially denied the existence of the camps, they later acknowledged them as ‘vocational education and training centres.’ They vary in size, from smaller political re-education camps, all the way up to full-blown prison complexes.

Their construction started in the mid-2010s, but skyrocketed after 2016, with satellite imagery from the time showing the sheer speed and scale of their expansion. The satellite footage also showed how some facilities were built bespoke, whilst others were converted from existing infrastructure, such as high schools. The BBC attested to the camps having expanded by 440 hectares since 2003, with some sites being estimated as large enough to hold tens of thousands of people.

The Xinjiang Police Files show the materials ordered to build these camps included barbed wire, as well as references to watchtowers and guardrooms. They were originally billed as ‘re-education schools’ where, alongside detention facilities, they provided an education to those imprisoned there. One Uyghur told a BBC documentary crew with rare access to the camps, ‘I have deeply understood my own mistakes,’ vowing to be a good citizen when released.

According to Human Rights Watch, Uyghurs in the detention centres are forced to learn Mandarin and are forbidden from speaking in other languages. The same report states Uyghurs are threatened with violence or longer sentences if they fail to learn 1,500 Chinese characters, and detainees are made to answer exams with quotes about their love and commitment to the motherland. An Amnesty International report explains that Uyghurs are made to participate in flag-raising ceremonies and attend political education classes where they are forced to sing songs about the state.

If someone does not know the words, or is unable to speak Mandarin, they are beaten. Amnesty International’s report describes life inside the camps as a ‘dystopian hellscape’, reporting that the detention complexes are often extremely overcrowded, with very little space to sit or lay down. It states Uyghurs in some facilities are taking turns to sleep, as there is not enough space for everyone inside to do so at the same time.

The prisoners in the camps are scarcely fed and food is used as a tool of control. One victim told the BBC, ‘You can’t think of anything beyond wishing you had a full stomach.’ The BBC claims detainees had food withheld for infractions such as failing to accurately memorise passages from books about Xi Jinping.

Human Rights Watch paints a stark picture of the Uyghurs’ treatment, claiming Uyghurs are shackled for long periods of time, locked in dark and cramped places, made to stand up straight or sit on uncomfortable stools for hours, and are deprived of sleep. It asserts that violence from the guards towards the prisoners is commonplace, as is psychological and sexual abuse.

Forced Labour: Aluminium, Cotton, and Plausible Deniability

In the vast prison complexes, satellite imagery of the camps shows factories on their grounds. Xinjiang produces 9% of the world’s aluminium, and bodies are needed to staff the factories that use it for manufacturing things like cars. The US Department of Labor states that Uyghurs are being forced to work in these factories.

This is not the first news of this kind, as the New Yorker has reported cases of Chinese officials going door-to-door in Xinjiang to requisition workers, yanking them out of their homes and taking them to work in fish processing plants in Shandong. If not sent to a factory, Uyghurs may be sent to the fields to pick cotton. China is by far the largest textile manufacturer on the planet, and Xinjiang happens to grow one fifth of the world’s cotton.

Human Rights Watch, as well as other leading human rights charities like Anti-slavery International, claim Uyghurs are forced to pick cotton while being watched 24/7 by officials who live, eat, study, and work alongside them. This provides a basis for the Uyghurs’ ongoing ‘education’ as well as supervision. In the Xinjiang Police Files, there are references to ‘guiding’ the pickers to ‘consciously resist illegal religious activities’, indicating that the policy of forced labour is geared towards Islamic minorities.

The BBC’s report on Xinjiang’s cotton industry says that Uyghurs are taught that working for the state is glorious, while raising children at home fuels poverty. It also shows how the state provides centralized systems of care for children, the elderly, and for livestock, so that, according to Beijing, everyone is ‘freed from the worries of going out to work.’ All of this, according to the BBC, is done under the guise of a Chinese regional campaign to end poverty by boosting the economies of rural areas.

This allows China to refute its ongoing forced labour campaign through plausible deniability, using their own spin to make their policies appear more progressive. According to Radio Free Asia, Beijing claims those who go to pick cotton are volunteers. Western nations have promoted economic measures to stop the West from buying cotton or aluminium from Xinjiang, including a complete ban enforced by Washington, but this has done little to slow China’s forced labour campaign.

Once aluminium is melted down or cotton is spun into clothing, it is incredibly difficult to identify where the source materials have come from. Not to mention that the West is not the only market for China to sell its goods to.

Treatment of Children: State Orphanages and Mandarin-Only Education

With many family members going missing through forced labour or detention, it is not uncommon for Uyghurs to struggle with the increased level of childcare required. What happens to Uyghur children when their parents are taken? According to the Associated Press, those under 5 are sent to state-run orphanages.

Between 2017 and 2018, the AP reports that Beijing dedicated $30 million to build or expand at least 45 orphanages or ‘children’s welfare’ centres, where Uyghur children are made to speak Mandarin, to read Mandarin, and to praise the state above all else. According to reports by NPR, the children are even made to thank the Chinese Communist Party and sing songs about ‘Grandfather Xi’. But not all is well; NPR tells us that teachers at these nurseries often resort to violence against the young children for not understanding instructions in Mandarin, despite having never spoken it before.

For older children, the CCP has built thousands of ‘bilingual’ schools, where minority children are taught exclusively Mandarin. They too are reported to be beaten for speaking in their mother tongues by NPR. The news organisation claims that young children are regularly hit or slapped, locked in dark basements, and are made to hold stress positions.

Uyghur parents still send their children in hope that an education will bring their children a brighter future. Some children go voluntarily, some are sent forcibly, and some simply have nowhere else to go. The Chinese state policy of ‘re-education’ continues in higher education.

A Chinese government notice posted in Kashgar back in February of 2018 stated that ‘students must be instilled with socialist values, be grateful for education, and love and repay the motherland’. It is unknown exactly how many Uyghur children and young people are in the Chinese education system, but the Georgetown Institute of International Affairs (GIIA) estimates it to be in the hundreds of thousands.

Treatment of Women: Forced Sterilisation, Sexual Violence, and Population Control

Uyghur women are reported to suffer some of the worst fates at the hands of the Chinese state. Chinese regulation on childbirth has caused officials to become very aggressive with Uyghur households. Despite once holding preferential treatment within China’s famous one-child policy, the tables have been turned in recent years, with Uyghur women being persecuted relentlessly.

Radio Free Europe (RFE) reports that Uyghur women and other ethnic minorities are often threatened with internment in the camps for refusing to abort pregnancies that exceed birth quotas. Meanwhile, the AP found that local governing bodies have built and expanded systems to reward those who report illegal births, further sewing distrust amongst Uyghur communities already spying on each other. Even more horrific is the ongoing systematic process of forced sterilisation of Uyghur women.

It is well reported by human rights groups like Human Rights Watch that hundreds of thousands of Uyghur women have been publicly and involuntarily fitted with intra-uterine devices (IUDs) to prevent pregnancy. They report that Uyghur women are forced to endure the humiliation of being stripped naked and beaten before being made involuntarily infertile. According to the AP, many of the implanted IUDs were designed to be irremovable without special instruments, causing complicating side effects, severe pain and bleeding.

The Uyghur Tribunal, an independent tribunal based in the UK assessing Uyghur human rights violations, found in 2022 that Uyghur women had also been coerced into receiving irreversible sterilisation surgery and were injected with birth control drugs against their will whilst in prison. Human Rights Watch accuses the Chinese state of attempting to limit the Uyghur birthrate through a campaign of fear, violence and mutilation, referring to it as an attempted genocide, as does the Uyghur Tribunal. The BBC reported that Uyghur women also face an institutionalised campaign of sexual assault, sexual violence and rape that is endemic among the female detained population.

One Uyghur woman, Tursunay Ziawudun, who was incarcerated herself in Xinjiang, told the BBC that the men wear suits, rather than police uniforms and masks to hide their identities. She said that many women are beaten as they are assaulted. Some are forced to help their assailants, while others are outnumbered by them, and that it is done out of the view of security cameras in secret rooms within the camps.

Ziawudun summed up the experience in the camps for women, stating: ‘They say people are released, but in my opinion everyone who leaves the camps is finished.‘

Organ Harvesting: A Booming Transplant Trade Fuelled by Persecution

China is accused of harvesting the organs of persecuted populations to fuel a booming transplant trade. In 2006, allegations were made by whistleblowers that the Chinese were persecuting another minority group, the Falun Gong. The China Tribunal, set up to investigate these allegations, found a minimum of 60,000 Falun Gong members had their organs illegally harvested without their consent.

Since 1999, organ donations have not increased in China, whilst demand for organs has boomed, yet any transplant in China takes mere weeks to organise and source. For example, in Shanghai Changzheng Hospital, their website archives state that at one time the average wait time for a liver transplant was one week. In Western nations with the most advanced organ donation networks in the world, it is common for patients to spend months on a transplant list, if not years.

UN experts are concerned about organ harvesting in China again, with The China Tribunal, now assessing the most recent claims in 2019, finding that ‘with certainty’ Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities’ organs are being harvested by the Chinese state. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights claims that Uyghurs are subject to blood tests, organ examinations, and even x-rays without their consent, the goal being to construct a living database of harvestable organs for easy access within China’s detention facilities. Uyghurs are not the only group to be targeted in this way.

As part of the greater Sinicization campaign, Amnesty International and the China Tribunal both agree that Falun Gong, Christians, Muslims, and other minorities are all targeted for their organs ‘on a massive scale’. However, Uyghurs are the only people over a million strong in Chinese prisons with an air of secrecy around victims’ fates, making them a likely group to be targeted for organ harvesting. The British Medical Association states the most common organs removed from the victims in China are hearts, kidneys, livers, and corneas.

Cultural Erasure: Destroying Mosques, Imprisoning Imams, and Targeting Intellectuals

China’s attempts to subdue Uyghur culture also come from the targeting of the Islamic faith across the country. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), two thirds of Xinjiang’s mosques, approximately 16,000, are reported to have been destroyed or damaged since 2017. The ASPI states, in its piece entitled ‘Cultural erasure’, that Islamic script, symbols, and even minarets have been removed from buildings and cemeteries.

Even the holiest elements of Islam are being curtailed by Beijing. The BBC reports that many Uyghurs, such as students or those in government jobs, are banned from fasting during the festival of Ramadan. NPR says Muslims must plan their Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca with the state, and failing to do so will lead to arrest upon their return.

According to Time Magazine, the Hajj is also used as an apparatus to repatriate exiled Uyghurs as they travel. China’s regulatory changes when it comes to religion are ongoing. Human Rights Watch states that as recently as February 2024, policies brought forth by Beijing are focusing on the Sinicization of religion, ensuring that all faiths align with Han Chinese culture, doctrines, and customs.

China’s campaign against Islam does not stop there. The Uyghur Human Rights Project asserts that China has imprisoned or detained at least 630 imams and other religious figures since 2014, 18 of which are reported to have died in detention or shortly thereafter. It is thought that the state arresting imams is a way of attempting to disrupt Uyghur organisation efforts at a community level whilst also limiting its spread.

Of the 630 confirmed arrested imams in the UHRP report, 96% were sentenced to over 5 years, with 26% sentenced to 20 years or more, and 14 were given life sentences. This is not the first example of imams being targeted en masse by the Chinese state. BBC News reports that in the early 2000s, many imams were compelled to attend formalised ‘education courses’ that foreshadowed the mass re-education programme Beijing would later enforce across Xinjiang.

According to Human Rights Watch, roughly 16,000 imams and other religious figures underwent ‘political re-education’ between 2001 and 2002. Academics, intellectuals, and otherwise influential Uyghurs are also targeted for imprisonment just as imams are. As of December 2023, the charity UyghurHjelp’s published list of detained Uyghur intellectuals since 2016 is 448 names long and includes engineers, painters, actors, singers, writers, journalists, teachers, professors, and doctors among many others.

The Uyghur Human Rights Project suspects at least 312 societal elites were being held in some form of detention as of 2021, where it describes this practice as an ‘assault on intellectual and cultural elites’ and that it ‘may constitute a new form of “eliticide” meant to exterminate Uyghur cultural identity.’ Han settlers are still continuously encouraged to move to Xinjiang, owed to the economic importance of the XUAR, the very same resettlement that caused tensions to rise originally in the 1990s. Radio Free Asia states that China offers incentives to Han Chinese who settle in the region, with Han reportedly being offered land, jobs, and economic subsidies for moving to Xinjiang.

RFA also claims China is promoting the inter-marriage of Uyghurs and Han; offering money and household appliances to mixed couples. Human Rights Watch accuses the Chinese state that, in doing this and in collaboration with other strategies like stunting population growth, the state is watering down the Uyghur population generation by generation and attempting to assimilate the Uyghurs into the dominant Han diaspora over time.

Why the World Went Quiet: Disinformation, Fatigue, and Economic Leverage

Given the scope of the persecution of the Uyghurs, the question remains: why did the Uyghurs simply vanish off the news after 2019? Why are so few people talking about them now when the scale of their suffering is so extensive? China has categorically denied the existence of a genocide at every opportunity.

According to Voices of America, when the Chinese state has the ability to comment on the situation in Xinjiang, it is used as an opportunity to blame a Western disinformation campaign for the allegations of ethnic cleansing against them. However, this logic of denial breaks down very quickly, as Beijing simultaneously speaks about the need for public safety and order in the region when referencing the Uyghurs, whilst Ailiti Saliyev, Deputy Foreign Publicity Director, claimed in 2017 that Muslims in Xinjiang are some of the happiest in the world. The BBC reports that China has done an incredibly effective job at silencing dissenters and victims through fear.

Whether it is fear for their families, fear of being discovered, or fear of speaking out, a blanket of silence covers the landscape. Compared to how many are detained, there are very few who speak out about their experiences; the Uyghur Human Rights Project believes this is in part due to Beijing’s international harassment of Uyghurs and journalists covering their persecution. The US has accused China of a global disinformation campaign when it invited foreign journalists from Beijing-friendly nations to Xinjiang for a ‘guided tour’.

However, when Western journalists go to Xinjiang, such as Sky News and the BBC, they are turned around, held for hours, or quickly ushered along, with everyone they meet repeating the same rehearsed lines. The Uyghur Human Rights Project has noted that Uyghurs overseas who speak out against the abuse in the XUAR become targets of harassment and fake news campaigns by Chinese officials, who will do anything to silence them. The prolonged nature of the Uyghur’s persecution also leads to a sense of fatigue from the international community; where the gravity of the situation is gradually diminished and eventually fades from collective memory.

Combine this with the 24-hour news cycle’s constant need for new information, and China’s lockdowns dramatically slowing the rate at which journalists are allocated entry visas, and it is not hard to see why the Uyghurs’ plight has been fading from the zeitgeist. The international community has done very little in response. China’s incredible economic influence over countless countries all over the world means that nations must kowtow to Beijing and ignore the treatment of Uyghurs in order to keep their economies intact through the lucrative deals that China sells them.

The West’s persistent use of sanctions against a number of Chinese officials has done nothing to stem the tide of the persecution, as international calls for recognition of the crimes committed against the Uyghurs fall on deaf ears. Some countries are even complicit. Amnesty International states that China requested the deportation of thousands of Uyghur students from abroad.

Majority Muslim nations like Egypt and Pakistan were forced to comply or lose investment. Turkey is a rare internationally vocal opponent. Erdogan’s commitment to being the leader of the Muslim world places him in a position to stand up for Uyghur Muslims, especially given their Turkic ancestry.

But largely, international efforts have been ineffective.

The Persecution Continues: Camps Replaced by Prisons, Multigenerational Trauma Ahead

A Washington Post article from September 2022 said ‘the re-education camp program appears to have ended in 2019 under international pressure’ to global acclaim. However, an on-the-ground investigation by Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), one of Switzerland’s most reliable news organisations, found that the Chinese government did not end the program — they merely closed some of the camps and replaced them with prisons. Whilst headlines like The Washington Post’s convinced international audiences that the persecution of Uyghurs had ended in 2019, this is far from the case.

NZZ’s investigation corroborates similar stories from the New York Times and Radio Free Asia that Uyghur persecution is still ongoing since its peak in 2018. A Uyghur woman speaking to Sky News confirmed ‘most are still inside’. According to human rights charity the Minority Rights Group (MRG), Uyghurs are still being persecuted in Xinjiang to this day.

Rian Thum, professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, said that these events ‘will create a multigenerational trauma from which many people will never recover.’ According to a British government report on the Uyghurs, population growth rates fell by 84% in the two largest Uyghur prefectures between 2015 and 2018 and declined further in 2019. Those who survive will go back to find their homes occupied, their jobs taken, and everything relating to their faith destroyed.

They will have no communities, no families, and no religion. They would continue to be closely monitored by the most invasive surveillance network on earth, with the population living in fear that the little they have left will also be taken away. However, there may yet be a future for the Uyghur people.

Their international communities are slowly growing, and the continued practice of their faith, despite the campaign of persecution against them, is a testament to the strength of the Uyghurs as a people. But without considerable international support, it is unlikely that Uyghurs will be able to find a home in Xinjiang much longer.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Uyghurs are detained and what is life like inside the camps?

Human rights groups and the Council on Foreign Relations estimate over one million Uyghurs are held in a network of hundreds of re-education camps and prisons across Xinjiang, with the vast majority never charged with a crime. Amnesty International describes conditions as a “dystopian hellscape”: facilities are severely overcrowded, inmates take turns sleeping, food is withheld as punishment, detainees are shackled and sleep-deprived, and violence and sexual abuse from guards are commonplace. Detainees are forced to learn Mandarin and can be beaten for failing to recite passages about Xi Jinping.

What surveillance systems does the Chinese state use to control Uyghurs in Xinjiang?

Xinjiang operates one of the most invasive surveillance networks in the world. It includes CCTV cameras with facial recognition and AI, GPS trackers mandated in cars, an app that monitors electricity use and phone calls, mandatory biometric data collection including DNA samples, and a social scoring system in some cities where Uyghurs lose points for praying or having relatives abroad. Those who score below 50 are deemed “unsafe” and detained, and the XUAR hired 40 times more police per capita than Guangdong province in 2017.

What forms of cultural and religious erasure are being carried out against Uyghurs?

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute reports that approximately 16,000 mosques — two thirds of Xinjiang’s total — have been destroyed or damaged since 2017, with Islamic script, symbols, and minarets removed from buildings and cemeteries. The state has imprisoned at least 630 imams and religious figures since 2014. Children in state-run orphanages and “bilingual” schools are taught exclusively in Mandarin and beaten for speaking their mother tongue. The state also promotes the inter-marriage of Uyghurs and Han Chinese and offers financial incentives to Han settlers moving to Xinjiang.

What is the evidence for forced sterilisation and population suppression?

Population growth rates fell by 84% in the two largest Uyghur prefectures between 2015 and 2018. Human Rights Watch and the Uyghur Tribunal document that hundreds of thousands of Uyghur women have been forcibly fitted with IUDs designed to be irremovable without special instruments, causing severe pain and side effects. Women face internment for exceeding birth quotas and have been injected with birth control drugs against their will. The British government’s own report confirmed the sharp decline in birth rates, leading human rights groups to characterize it as an attempted genocide.

Why has the international response been so limited?

China’s enormous economic leverage compels many nations to ignore the persecution to preserve trade and investment relationships. China has also run an effective disinformation campaign, claiming the allegations are a Western fabrication while simultaneously citing public safety needs in Xinjiang. A blanket of fear silences most victims and witnesses, and Beijing actively harasses Uyghur dissidents abroad. The prolonged nature of the crisis has led to “compassion fatigue” in the international media cycle, exacerbated by China’s restrictions on foreign journalists, meaning the situation has faded from public consciousness despite continuing on an enormous scale.

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