Parent-Child Separation in Yarkand Country, Kashgar

New evidence from non-public Xinjiang government spreadsheets has come to light that details the fate of over 10,000 children from the Uyghur majority population county of Yarkand (Kashgar Prefecture). All of these children have one or both parents in internment (detention centers, re-education camps or prisons). The documents show how the state is caring for these children. About 1,000 of these children have both parents in detention. The spreadsheets indicate that a number of them have been placed into state-run orphanages, while others are kept in full-time boarding school facilities. Other spreadsheets show entire households along with the internment status of their members, corroborating the veracity of these lists of “children in difficult circumstances” and giving us a full picture of their actual family situation.