Uyghur Repression, Incarceration, and Refugees

Annotated Bibliography
Summary

Uyghur’s are an ethnic minority originating from the Xinjiang province in China (‘New Territory’ in Chinese.) They are largely Muslim and have a distinct Turkic culture and language from the Chinese majority, who are estimated at around 92% Han Chinese. Xinjiang borders nine different nations, from South and Central Asia to Russia, which all host populations of Uyghurs and other Turkic speaking Muslims. Over the last decade there have been several sporadic terrorist attacks and ethnic riots in Xinjiang, taking place in the region and elsewhere in China. The authorities have tackled this issue with the mass internment of potentially over a million Uyghurs, into so-called ‘re-education Camps.’ Reports claim violence, torture, sterilization, and rape are employed against Uyghurs, while Xinjiang has become increasingly militarized. This coincides with China’s trillion-dollar infrastructure project, the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, that connects China to the west via Xinjiang. 

Human rights groups and the U.S government have declared the situation a genocide, drawing counterclaims from the Chinese government that their methods are merely a de-radicalization response to a genuine terror threat. U.S critics internationally have questioned the political motives behind the support for Uyghur Muslims, given the opposite or indifferent approach to American, Palestinian, Rohingya and Kashmiri Muslims. In some cases international leftists have denied Uyghur claims of genocide and oppression outright. 

The difference between Kashmiris, Rohingya and the Uyghurs, is that the former two crises are mostly isolated to the respective nations, with little perceived stake for the broader international community. China and the U.S are the world’s largest powers, and therefore greater geo-political stake is placed on Uyghurs, but it does not necessarily bear on their lived reality, resulting in ideological reductionism and propaganda. Uyghurs are then made subservient to a larger political narrative, whether Chinese or North American, and their complex cultural, political, and geographic history as cross-border people is erased. With these annotated sources, I hope to elucidate the Uyghur plight holistically. There is a major case for genocide, as well surveillance and harassment of Uyghur refugees.