Xinjiang internment camps

Based on Wikipedia: Xinjiang internment camps

Somewhere between one and two million people have vanished into a network of detention facilities in northwestern China. Not prisoners in any conventional sense—most have never been charged with a crime, never stood before a judge, never been told when they might be released. They are Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic Muslims, swept up in what has become the largest mass incarceration of an ethnic and religious minority since the Second World War.

The Chinese government calls these facilities "vocational education and training centers." Human rights organizations call them something else entirely: internment camps designed to systematically erase a people's identity.

A Distant Province, A Long History

To understand what is happening in Xinjiang today, you need to understand that this region has always sat uneasily within the Chinese state. The name itself is telling—Xinjiang means "new frontier" or "new territory" in Mandarin, a name imposed when the Qing dynasty finally conquered the region around 1758.

The Qing were not Han Chinese. They were Manchus, an ethnic minority from the northeast who had seized control of China and then expanded its borders dramatically, absorbing Tibet, Mongolia, and eventually Xinjiang into what would become modern China's territory. But even the Qing treated Xinjiang as something other than core Chinese land. They designated it a penal colony—a place to exile criminals and troublemakers.

The twentieth century brought chaos. Warlords carved out territories. A brief independent republic called East Turkestan flickered into existence in 1933, was crushed within a year, then rose again in 1944 with Soviet backing before being absorbed into Mao Zedong's newly declared People's Republic of China in 1949.

From the 1950s onward, Beijing pursued a strategy that colonial powers throughout history have found effective: demographic transformation. The government sponsored mass migration of Han Chinese into Xinjiang, diluting the local population. Policies promoted Chinese cultural unity while punishing expressions of Uyghur identity. By the late twentieth century, Uyghurs had gone from being the overwhelming majority in their homeland to watching Han Chinese become an ever-larger presence in their cities and towns.

The Violence That Came Before

The camps did not emerge from nowhere. They emerged from fear—both the Chinese government's fear of separatism and the genuine violence that had erupted in the region.

In 1997, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Chinese police rounded up and executed thirty suspected separatists. The response was predictable: large demonstrations broke out in the city of Ghulja. The People's Liberation Army cracked down, killing at least nine people. Days later, bombs exploded on buses in the regional capital of Ürümqi, killing nine more and wounding sixty-eight. Uyghur exile groups claimed responsibility.

But the defining moment came in July 2009. What began as a dispute between Uyghur and Han Chinese workers in a factory spiraled into full-scale riots that killed over one hundred people. The violence didn't stop there. Over the next several years, Uyghur militants launched a series of coordinated attacks: stabbings in train stations, bombings in markets, cars driven into crowds. In March 2014, attackers with knives killed thirty-one people at a railway station in Kunming, over a thousand miles from Xinjiang.

Some of these attacks were orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party, an organization that had been designated as terrorist by the United Nations, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and for many years the United States. The violence was real. The question was what response it would provoke.

The Architecture of Control

The answer came in 2017, when the camps began to multiply across Xinjiang.

The man most responsible was Chen Quanguo, a Communist Party official who had previously served in Tibet, where he had developed a reputation for ruthless efficiency in suppressing dissent. When Chen arrived in Xinjiang in August 2016, he brought his methods with him.

Within two years, local authorities had recruited over ninety thousand new police officers—more than double the number hired in the previous seven years combined. They installed approximately 7,300 heavily guarded checkpoints throughout the region. English-language news reports began describing Xinjiang as the most extensive police state in the world.

But the checkpoints and police were just the visible infrastructure. Behind them lay something more sophisticated: an artificial intelligence system called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, or IJOP. This software analyzed data from the surveillance cameras, the mobile phone trackers, the checkpoints, and the informants that now saturated Uyghur life. According to Human Rights Watch, the system could flag individuals for detention based on thirty-six different "person types."

The criteria were almost absurdly broad. You could be flagged for not using a mobile phone. For using the back door of your house instead of the front. For consuming an unusual amount of electricity. For having what authorities deemed an "abnormal" beard. For socializing too little. For maintaining relationships the algorithm considered "complex." Even for having a family member who exhibited any of these traits, which made you "insufficiently loyal."

Once flagged, you could be swept into the camps with no trial, no charges, no idea when—or whether—you would be released.

What Happens Inside

The Chinese government insists these facilities are schools. "Vocational education and training centers" where people voluntarily learn job skills and Mandarin Chinese. The testimonies of those who have survived them tell a different story.

Human Rights Watch and other organizations have documented accounts of forced political indoctrination, where detainees are required to renounce their religious beliefs, criticize themselves and their families, and memorize Communist Party propaganda. Reports describe cramped cells, inadequate food, and punishment for speaking Uyghur or praying.

The Canadian House of Commons has gone further, describing evidence of mistreatment, rape, torture, and genocide. Researchers estimate that mass internments peaked in 2018, with perhaps 1.8 million people detained at the system's height. Since then, according to Adrian Zenz, a German researcher who has become one of the leading analysts of the camps, the focus has shifted. Many detainees have been moved into the formal prison system or transferred to factories where they provide forced labor.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, using satellite imagery, documented that construction of new facilities continued even as Chinese officials claimed the system was winding down. What the government said was ending was, in fact, evolving—becoming more permanent, more integrated into the economy.

The Justifications

How does a government justify disappearing a million people?

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States provided one answer. In the aftermath of those attacks, the phrase "global war on terrorism" became a permission slip for governments around the world to crack down on Muslim populations. China seized the opportunity, framing its actions in Xinjiang as simply another front in this global struggle.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization—a regional security alliance including China, Russia, and several Central Asian states—had identified three threats requiring coordinated response: terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism. Chinese officials argued that Uyghurs embodied all three. The camps, in this telling, were merely a counterterrorism measure.

But there is another explanation that some analysts find more persuasive: the Belt and Road Initiative.

In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the most ambitious infrastructure project in modern history—a vast network of railways, ports, pipelines, and highways connecting China to Europe, Africa, and the rest of Asia. Xinjiang sits at the geographic heart of this project. The ancient Silk Road ran through these lands, and Xi's new Silk Road would do the same.

The problem, from Beijing's perspective, was that this critical corridor was inhabited by people who did not see themselves as Chinese—people with linguistic, religious, and cultural ties to the Turkic and Muslim worlds to the west. Sean Roberts of George Washington University has argued that the Communist Party views Uyghur attachment to their traditional homeland as a risk to the Belt and Road Initiative's success. Opening Xinjiang to increased trade might also open it to outside influences that could strengthen Uyghur identity and resistance.

The solution, it seems, was to ensure that by the time the new Silk Road was complete, the Uyghurs would be too broken to pose any threat to it.

Religion as the Enemy

China is officially an atheist state, though its constitution permits citizens to hold religious beliefs. In practice, the Communist Party recognizes five religions—Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism—and maintains tight control over all of them.

Under Xi Jinping, that control has intensified. The policy is called "Sinicization"—making religion more Chinese, more compatible with Communist Party rule, less connected to foreign influences or universal claims that might compete with loyalty to the state. In 2018, the government agencies responsible for managing ethnic minorities and religious affairs were placed directly under the control of the Party's United Front Work Department, signaling that these were now matters of political ideology, not mere administration.

For Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, the implications were severe. A senior Party official reportedly argued around 2015 that "a third" of Xinjiang's Uyghurs were "polluted by religious extremist forces" and needed to be "educated and reformed through concentrated force." The phrase "concentrated force" is chilling in its implications.

The restrictions that followed targeted the ordinary practices of Muslim life. Wearing a headscarf. Growing a beard. Fasting during Ramadan. Praying during work hours. For government employees—and in a region where the state is the dominant employer, that meant a huge portion of the workforce—these practices were banned. The burqa was prohibited in public spaces. Even having a Quran could attract suspicion.

The World Responds—Differently

At the United Nations, the camps have produced a striking diplomatic divide. Countries in North America and Europe have signed letters condemning the detention system, calling for independent access to Xinjiang, demanding accountability.

But a different group of nations—predominantly in Asia and Africa—has signed letters supporting China's policies. They characterize the camps as a legitimate response to terrorism, praise China's economic development efforts, and invoke the principle of non-interference in sovereign affairs.

The divide reveals something important about the international order in the twenty-first century. Western nations speak the language of universal human rights. But many other countries—particularly those receiving Chinese investment through the Belt and Road Initiative—are willing to accept China's framing of the issue, or at least unwilling to challenge it.

In November 2020, the United States removed the Turkistan Islamic Party from its list of designated terrorist organizations, concluding that the group was no longer in existence as a functioning entity. Some intelligence officials welcomed the decision because it removed the pretext China had used to justify its "terrorism eradication" campaigns. But the group remains listed as terrorist by the United Nations Security Council and several national governments, giving China continued rhetorical cover for its actions.

The Echoes of History

There is a temptation, when confronting atrocity, to reach for historical comparison. The camps in Xinjiang have been compared to the Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong unleashed chaos across China in the name of purifying the revolution, destroying traditional culture and persecuting millions. They have been compared to darker precedents still.

What makes the Xinjiang camps distinctive is their technological sophistication. The Cultural Revolution relied on mass mobilization—neighbor informing on neighbor, children denouncing parents. The Xinjiang system relies on artificial intelligence, facial recognition, DNA databases, and smartphone surveillance. It is oppression automated, made efficient, operating at a scale that would have been impossible in any previous era.

One expert has called it "the most extreme example of China's inhumane policies against Uyghurs." The phrasing is careful—it suggests these policies exist on a spectrum, that what is happening in Xinjiang is the far end of something visible elsewhere in Chinese society. The surveillance state being tested in Xinjiang is a preview of systems that may eventually be deployed more broadly, both within China and potentially exported to other authoritarian regimes worldwide.

What We Know and What We Don't

The truth about the camps remains partially obscured. Foreign journalists are heavily restricted in Xinjiang. Independent researchers rely on satellite imagery, leaked government documents, and the testimony of those who have escaped. The Chinese government grants carefully controlled tours to selected visitors and insists that Western reports are fabrications designed to undermine China's development.

But the evidence that has emerged—from multiple independent sources using different methodologies—paints a consistent picture. Somewhere in the deserts and mountains of northwestern China, a government has built a system designed to transform an entire people. To strip away their language, their religion, their connection to their history and homeland. To make them, in the end, no longer Uyghur.

Whether that project will succeed—and what the world will do about it—remains an open question. But the camps exist. The people inside them are real. And what is happening to them will be remembered as one of the defining moral tests of our time.