Repression reigns in the supposedly autonomous region in western China. President Xi Jinping wants to purge the region of "populations of inferior quality." Testimonies document the practices.
Philipp Mattheis, former China correspondent for Wirtschaftswoche and East Asia correspondent for Stern magazine, has written a highly topical book. In it, he analyzes the Chinese government's policy toward Uyghurs and Kazakhs, as well as what is happening in the re-education camps in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. He shows how Xinjiang, as "Beijing's gateway to Eurasia," is embedded in the policies of the "new Silk Road" as well as in global economic flows and is therefore of immense geostrategic importance to the Chinese government. At the same time, he gives the personal accounts of Uighur and Kazakh camp survivors. In this way, Mattheis manages not to lose sight of the individual suffering in the internment camps and at the same time to explain why the international community has so far held back with concrete consequences for the perpetrators of this suffering, the Chinese government.
Mattheis has not been back to Xinjiang since 2014 and explicitly points out that his book summarizes the research of researchers such as Adrian Zenz and Mareike Ohlberg and journalists such as Harald Maass and Christoph Giesen. Of particular importance are the eyewitness accounts of six camp survivors who testified before the independent Uyghur Tribunal in 2021. Zumret Dawut, Abdusalam Muhammad, Mihrigul Tursun, Qelbinur Sidik, Gulbahar Jelilova and Gulbahar Haitiwaji report about constant surveillance by cameras, insufficient supply of food and medicine, prohibition to speak. They were subjected to constant brainwashing and had to repeat praises of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on a daily basis. Above all, they were subjected to massive torture and frequent rape. Internationally, Gulbahar Jelilova's case in particular should raise more concern. Jelilova is a Kazakh citizen, yet she was interned and tortured for over a year. Cases like hers show that this is by no means a purely internal Chinese issue, as the Chinese government insists. read more