Here’s our addition to the growing body of reporting on China’s shadowy attempt to erase the cultural identities of around 14 million Muslim minorities living in the northwestern border region of Xinjiang using a network of internment camps. 1/x wsj.com/articles/china…
We confirmed a lot of what others have reported and we found out some new things. It’s incredibly difficult to dig up information about these camps, so I thought it would be helpful to describe how we did our reporting. 2/x
One big challenge has been the inability of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities abroad to talk about what’s happening back home, either because friends and family have cut off contact with them or because they’re afraid that talking will get their relatives sent to a camp. 3/x
This is slowly starting to change as the situation becomes more desperate. My colleague @evadou talked to roughly 30 exiled Uighurs who have family members in the camps, including some who let use their real names despite the immense risks. 4/x
@evadou Ethnic Kazakhs who were detained in the camps and released (some of the only people to get out) have made their way into Kazakhstan and are starting to talk publicly (big h/t here to @gerryshih and @AP). My colleague @jnbpage talked to six of them in Almaty. 5/x
@evadou @gerryshih @AP @JNBPage The stories of individual Uighur exiles and the former detainees match to a significant degree and paint a chillingly consistent picture of what’s happening both inside and outside the camps 6/x
@evadou @gerryshih @AP @JNBPage Another thing we relied on heavily: satellite imagery. This is one channel of information that even the Chinese government can’t control, and it provides critical evidence of the existence and expansion of the camps. 7/x
@evadou @gerryshih @AP @JNBPage His name was cut from our story to make way for more personal tales from Uighurs, but @shawnwzhang deserves huge credit for pioneering this approach. Check out his work here: medium.com/@shawnwzhang?s… 8/x
@evadou @gerryshih @AP @JNBPage @shawnwzhang We also got a lot of help from @mhanmam at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who used satellite images from @planetlabs to help us analyze a camp near Kashgar we visited in November that has been metastasizing at a remarkable rate. 9/x
@evadou @gerryshih @AP @JNBPage @shawnwzhang @planetlabs Here‘s a graphic from the print story that shows what features have been added since April last year: new housing for detainees, a massive parking lot, more guard towers and a dorm for construction workers that was built just in the past week. 10/x 
Note the diagonal wall on the west side that was demolished to make way for the new housing, which suggests authorities may have originally underestimated the number of detainees the facility would need to hold. 11/x
Another vital source of information is the work of @adrianzenz, who collected government construction bids and tender documents confirming 78 camps, worth a total of $755 million. 12/x
The government stopped posting construction bids publicly shortly after he published his initial research earlier this year. You can find a link to his paper here, which also digs into the historical roots of the campaign. 13/x jamestown.org/program/eviden…
Finally, there’s on-the-ground reporting. The mere act of talking to Uighurs puts them at risk, and police are quick to jump on any journalists they find snooping around, but you can still move around enough to get a sense of how people are living. 13/x
For example, in Turpan, I went to find the apartment where the parents of Murat Uyghur lived before they were sent to a camp. Here is it, in the corner of housing compound ringed with razor wire and patrolled by police: 15/x
Directly opposite, visible across a construction site, is a newly built internment camp, guarded by one of Xinjiang’s ubiquitous “convenience”
police stations: 15/x
police stations: 15/x
I got close enough to see Uighurs emerging from a family visitation room before police started shouting at me to leave: 16/x
We sent photos and satellite images to @shawnwzhang, who said the facility was similar to other camps he’s found: more school-like than a common detention-center, but with less security than a full-scale prison. 17/x
Last week at the UN, Chinese officials described the camps as “vocational schools” (which is how many are listed in government bids) designed to help minor criminals learn how to better integrate into society. 18/x
All other evidence suggests that is, at best, a disingenuously narrow presentation of the truth. Based on everything we and others have found, if the Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang are learning anything, it’s that Chinese society doesn’t want them. 19/x
No one can predict what the ultimate consequences of all this will be, but as @adrianzenz put it to me, putting people in a constant state of fear “is something that can lead to many evil things.” FIN
@evadou @gerryshih @AP @JNBPage @shawnwzhang @planetlabs Sorry, a Twitter handle typo here. That should be @mhanham. Sorry Melissa!
@adrianzenz I just realized I forgot to post the picture of Murat Harri Uyghur’s parents’ house. Here is it for real this time. It’s in Turpan’s New District, a largely Han Chinese neighborhood. Most of the Uighur restaurants were padlocked shut the day I was there.
Also, in case there is confusion on numbers: The total Muslim population of Xinjiang is around 14 million. The UN estimate for people detained in camps is one million. The overall campaign, however, is clearly aimed at the population as a whole.
