Forced labor has been a central part of China’s campaign against the Uighurs for as long as I can remember. I was born in a re-education camp at the height of China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. My father was sent to a separate forced labor camp. I grew up witnessing Uighur villagers forced by Chinese authorities […]
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Tensions sharply worsened from 2009, when Uighurs taking part in ethnic riots killed about 200 Han in Urumqi, the regional capital, after earlier tensions and violence. Chinese security forces began a sweeping crackdown. Attacks and more crackdowns occurred across Uighur towns in the years afterward, as well as in some cities outside Xinjiang. Since 2017, […]
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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a ban on imports of cotton and tomatoes from the Xinjiang area of China, as well as all products made with those materials, citing human rights violations and the widespread use of forced labor in the region. The measure could have sweeping implications for makers of apparel […]
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The first time I truly realized I was Uighur was just three years ago, when I saw the now-infamous viral photo of rows of Turkic men in dark blue uniforms, sitting in a concentration camp in Hotan, Xinjiang, a so-called Uighur autonomous region in China. Scanning the prisoners’ despondent faces, I was startled by their […]
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Xiaojing Sun, a senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said solar companies were starting to investigate their exposure to Xinjiang and reconfigure their supply chains to avoid the region if possible. In a note to investors in October, analysts at Roth Capital Partners said the solar sector faced a “heightened risk of disruption” because of […]
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As the Chinese government tracked and persecuted members of predominantly Muslim minority groups, the technology giant Alibaba taught its corporate customers how they could play a part. Alibaba’s website for its cloud computing business showed how clients could use its software to detect the faces of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities within images and videos, […]
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The International Criminal Court has decided not to pursue an investigation into China’s mass detention of Muslims, a setback for activists eager to hold Beijing accountable for persecution of ethnic and religious minorities. Prosecutors in The Hague said on Monday that they would not, for the moment, investigate allegations that China had committed genocide and […]
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Since its origins in the ninth century, Dadivank Monastery has withstood Seljuk and Mongol invasions, Persian domination, Soviet rule and, this fall, a second brutal war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Now the majestic stone complex — which includes two frescoed churches, a bell tower and numerous medieval inscriptions — faces something that could be even […]
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WASHINGTON — Nike and Coca-Cola are among the major companies and business groups lobbying Congress to weaken a bill that would ban imported goods made with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region, according to congressional staff members and other people familiar with the matter, as well as lobbying records that show vast spending on the […]
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I last saw my old professor Abduqadir Jalalidin at his Urumqi apartment in late 2016. Over home-pulled laghman noodles and a couple of bottles of Chinese liquor, we talked and laughed about everything from Uighur literature to American politics. Several years earlier, when I had defended my master’s thesis on Uighur poetry, Jalalidin, himself a […]
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URUMQI, China — At the end of a desolate road rimmed by prisons, deep within a complex bristling with cameras, American technology is powering one of the most invasive parts of China’s surveillance state. The computers inside the complex, known as the Urumqi Cloud Computing Center, are among the world’s most powerful. They can watch […]
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Brushing aside condemnation from Western powers, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, called his policies in the ethnically divided region of Xinjiang a “totally correct” success, and vowed more efforts to imprint Chinese national identity “deep in the soul” of Uighurs and other largely Muslim minorities. Mr. Xi made the remarks during a two-day conference that ended […]
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Before Xinjiang, there was Tibet. Repressive policies tested there between 2012 and 2016 were then applied to the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in northwestern China: entire cities covered in surveillance cameras, ubiquitous neighborhood police stations, residents made to report on another other. Now that process also works the other way around. Xinjiang’s coercive labor […]
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As China faced rising international censure last year over its mass internment of Muslim minorities, officials asserted that the indoctrination camps in the western region of Xinjiang had shrunk as former camp inmates rejoined society as reformed citizens. Researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on Thursday challenged those claims with an investigation that found […]
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WASHINGTON — The coronavirus was spreading around the world, and officials at the United States Agency for International Development were anxious to rush humanitarian aid to nations in need. But first, they had to settle a debate over American branding and whether it should be displayed on assistance headed to conflict zones. Political appointees from […]
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LOS ANGELES — Executives at Walt Disney Studios were celebrating. “Mulan,” a $200 million live-action spectacle five years in the making, had arrived on Disney’s streaming service to strong reviews, with critics lauding its ravishing scenery and thrilling battle sequences. The abundant controversies that had dogged “Mulan” over its gestation — false rumors that Disney […]
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Disney’s live-action remake of “Mulan” has drawn a fresh wave of criticism for being filmed partly in Xinjiang, the region in China where Uighur Muslims have been detained in mass internment camps. The outcry was the latest example of how the new film, which was released on Disney+ over the weekend, has become a magnet […]
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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is weighing a ban on some or all products made with cotton from the Xinjiang region of China, a move that could come as soon as Tuesday as the United States looks to punish Beijing over alleged human rights violations, three people familiar with the matter said. The potential ban, […]
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First came the notices that Chinese officials had declared a “wartime” state. Then the authorities started going door to door, sealing off apartments and warning residents to stay inside. The Chinese government in recent weeks has imposed a sweeping lockdown across the Xinjiang region in western China, penning in millions of people as part of […]
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For several years now, the police and other authorities in China have been collecting across the country DNA samples from millions of men and boys who aren’t suspected of having committed any crime. In a report published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute last month, we exposed the extent of the Chinese government’s program of […]
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On Thursday, more than 190 organizations spanning 36 countries issued a call to action, seeking formal commitments from clothing brands to cut all ties with suppliers implicated in Uighur forced labor and to end all sourcing from the Xinjiang region of China in the next twelve months. Roughly one in five cotton garments sold globally […]
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WASHINGTON — Several Chinese firms and the major international brands they supply pushed back against the Trump administration’s decision to add 11 Chinese companies to a government blacklist for aiding human rights violations, saying they had found no evidence of forced labor or other abuses in their supply chains. On Monday, the Trump administration added […]
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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday barred 11 new Chinese companies from purchasing American technology and products without a special license, saying the firms were complicit in human rights violations in China’s campaign targeting Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region. The list of sanctioned companies includes current and former suppliers to major international brands […]
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If you are one of the millions of people around the world wearing a face mask because of the coronavirus pandemic, this footage may concern you. It shows a group of Uighurs arriving at a textile company that started producing masks in response to the pandemic. The Uighurs are a long-persecuted, largely Muslim ethnic minority. […]
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