The Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking, Muslim ethnic group who are native to Xinjiang, northwest China. In 2016, the Communist Party Secretary in Tibet, Chen Quanguo, was moved to the role of governor of Xinjiang, where he launched a mass persecution campaign against the Uyghurs, seemingly in response to a handful of terror attacks.
Amnesty International reports that up to a million Uyghurs have been through re-education camps, where many are forced to renounce Islam and sing nationalistic songs. In July 2019, the government claimed, without evidence, that most detainees from these camps had been released. Many of these ‘graduates’ have been transferred into a network of factories to perform forced labour. Outside the factories, a high-tech surveillance state ensures that Uyghur life is ruthlessly controlled.
