All Reading

This section contains a curated list of useful articles, investigations, books and other reading materials. The list is updated on a weekly basis and suggestions for additions are welcome.

Starting Points:

Eyewitness Accounts

Overview Reports

Lists / Databases of Victims

Satellite Imagery of Camps, Prisons & Cultural Destruction

Who’s trying to weaken a US bill targeting forced labor in China?
Quartz Lina K Quartz Lina K

Who’s trying to weaken a US bill targeting forced labor in China?

A coalition of groups calling for an end to the repression of Uyghurs in China is demanding a number of prominent companies come clean about their lobbying and other actions to alter or weaken a proposed bill targeting imports made with Uyghur forced labor. Among the companies it has asked to publicly disclose their activities are Apple, Nike, Walmart, Adidas, Gap, and several others.

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Big Data Program Targets Xinjiang’s Muslims - Leaked List of Over 2,000 Detainees Demonstrates Automated Repression
Human Rights Watch Lina K Human Rights Watch Lina K

Big Data Program Targets Xinjiang’s Muslims - Leaked List of Over 2,000 Detainees Demonstrates Automated Repression

A big data program for policing in China’s Xinjiang region arbitrarily selects Turkic Muslims for possible detention, Human Rights Watch said today. A leaked list of over 2,000 detainees from Aksu prefecture provided to Human Rights Watch is further evidence of China’s use of technology in its repression of the Muslim population.

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Inside A Xinjiang Detention Camp
Buzzfeed News Lina K Buzzfeed News Lina K

Inside A Xinjiang Detention Camp

It started as a single small compound. Within 18 months, it had grown to more than 10 times its original size, capable of holding about 3,700 detainees. China's mass internment system for Muslims in Xinjiang is so secretive that, despite a growing international outcry, little is known about any one detention camp. Interviews and architectural modeling offer a rare and terrifying view into a massive internment complex.

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Coercive Labor in Xinjiang: Labor Transfer and the Mobilization of Ethnic Minorities to Pick Cotton
Newlines Institute Lina K Newlines Institute Lina K

Coercive Labor in Xinjiang: Labor Transfer and the Mobilization of Ethnic Minorities to Pick Cotton

Xinjiang produces 85 percent of China’s and 20 percent of the world’s cotton. Chinese cotton products, in turn, constitute an important basis for garment production in numerous other Asian countries. New evidence shows that hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority laborers in Xinjiang are being forced to pick cotton by hand through a coercive state-mandated labour transfer and “poverty alleviation” scheme, potentially affecting all global supply chains that involve Xinjiang cotton as a raw material.

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China’s ‘tainted’ cotton
BBC Lina K BBC Lina K

China’s ‘tainted’ cotton

China is forcing hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other minorities into hard, manual labour in the vast cotton fields of its western region of Xinjiang, according to new research seen by the BBC. Based on newly discovered online documents, it provides the first clear picture of the potential scale of forced labour in the picking of a crop that accounts for a fifth of the world’s cotton supply and is used widely throughout the global fashion industry.

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Why Did the United States Take China’s Word on Supposed Uighur Terrorists?
Foreign Policy Lina K Foreign Policy Lina K

Why Did the United States Take China’s Word on Supposed Uighur Terrorists?

On Oct. 20, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quietly entered into the Federal Register that the United States no longer recognized the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a “terrorist organization.” China, which portrays ETIM as part of the supposed Uighur terrorist threat that justifies its brutal crackdown in Xinjiang, immediately complained bitterly.

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IOC President Thomas Bach: Olympics ‘Are Not About Politics,’ Athletes Should Be Politically Neutral At Games
Forbes Lina K Forbes Lina K

IOC President Thomas Bach: Olympics ‘Are Not About Politics,’ Athletes Should Be Politically Neutral At Games

In an op-ed that ran on The Guardian’s website Friday, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach penned his thoughts on politics and the Olympic Games and why, in his opinion, the two don’t mix. “The Olympic Games are not about politics. The International Olympic Committee, as a civil non-governmental organisation, is strictly politically neutral at all times,” Bach wrote.

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Parent-Child Separation in Yarkand Country, Kashgar
Adrian Zenz Lina K Adrian Zenz Lina K

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). 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.

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Cultural erasure: Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang
ASPI Lina K ASPI Lina K

Cultural erasure: Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang

The Chinese government has embarked on a systematic campaign to rewrite the cultural heritage of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China by desecrating or “rectifying” mosques and indigenous sacred sites. This report maps over 900 mosques and other important Uyghur religious-cultural sites across Xinjiang, analyses their condition before and after 2017, and then used statistical extrapolation to estimate the full extent of their destruction and alteration.

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Xinjiang Detention and Cultural Sites Interactive Map
ASPI Lina K ASPI Lina K

Xinjiang Detention and Cultural Sites Interactive Map

ASPI researchers have located, mapped and analysed over 380 suspected detention facilities in Xinjiang that have been built or expanded since 2017, making it the most comprehensive dataset on Xinjiang’s detention system in the world. The project has also located and analysed hundreds of mosques and other important Uyghur and Islamic cultural sites in Xinjiang and assessed how many have been demolished or damaged since 2017. Both datasets are viewable on this interactive map.

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