Adrian Zenz has uncovered human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang province almost single-handedly. Now China has imposed sanctions on him. He accuses German companies of duplicity.
The world public has only known about the massive human rights violations in China's Xinjiang province since a German researcher produced tangible evidence of them. Adrian Zenz meticulously documents how China's government persecutes the Uyghur minority in China's northwest. From public documents such as construction tenders, the anthropologist has filtered out details of internment camps, forced labor and forced contraception.
Even as a schoolboy, the now 47-year-old was interested in data, statistics and computers. Because he often found anthropology to be ideological, he turned to empirical work. His revelations are having an impact. U.S. President Joe Biden - drawing heavily on Zenz's research - speaks of genocide against the Uighurs. Biden's predecessor Donald Trump had already issued an import ban on cotton from Xinjiang in January, also heavily influenced by Zenz's studies. In late March, China imposed sanctions on Zenz, who is a researcher at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and lives in Minnesota. China did so in response to EU sanctions against Chinese for human rights abuses in Xinjiang - and targeted a researcher whose work has displeased the regime for years. read more