ok, a short thread on sexual violence in Xinjiang, which is obviously going to get quite disturbing.
We have only very limited reports of this co-sleeping practice crossing gender lines, although it *appears* to be common for the Han 'big brothers and sisters' to co-sleep with their 'hosts' of the same gender.
It seems unlikely that this is a *deliberate* part of the monitoring and cultural coercion program. But sexual abuse is an entirely predictable side effect of giving men this level of state-backed control over a household.
Compounding this is a bunch of popular discourse among Han Chinese about Uighur women. When I interviewed Han about the Uighur in the early 2010s, Uighur women were almost universally agreed to be both beautiful and inaccessible.
*Tons* of my Han interviewees told me that Han men were forbidden by the state from marrying Uighur women - but that Uighur men could marry Han women. This was, at the time, a complete falsehood - though it dimly dated back to an earlier policy.
Han-Uighur intermarriage was, in fact, officially forbidden in Xinjiang until 1979 - though the rule, like all rules, was often broken.
But this tied into a general narrative of ethnic resentment among Han, which saw minorities, especially the Uighur, as unduly privileged. (Think of the resentment among white Americans toward affirmative action)
The rate of inter-marriage remained *extremely* low - about 1 in 50 - compared to other minorities, where intermarriage was common.
Today the official policy is to *heavily* promote Han-Uighur marriage, almost always between Han men and Uighur women. See @dtbyler here - supchina.com/2019/08/07/uyg… - and note that the 'model' marriage is between a Han security worker and a Uighur local.
@dtbyler We don't know how many of these marriages are effectively coerced, but given the situation of colonial terror in Xinjiang, there has to be strong suspicion about the validity of any marriage between an incomer with ties to the security state and a local.
@dtbyler It's also worth noting that in the period of relative PRC openness in the 2000s, *many* stories and examples of CCP officials using their power to sexually abuse women across China emerged despite being anathema to the official narrative. Again, zero surprise.
@dtbyler Both the CCP and PLA are *heavily* patriarchal and do very little to control sexual abuse *even outside of the colonial context.*
@dtbyler Uighur women, though, are especially vulnerable to this - not only because of their powerlessness at present, but because they have effectively been turned into another resource to be extracted.
@dtbyler Bear in mind, too, that many of the men being *sent* to Xinjiang as settlers and security forces are often exactly those least likely to find partners back home due to a lack of education and prospects.
@dtbyler The conception of Uighur women as ethereal beauties is compounded by historical narratives like the 'Fragrant Concubine.' america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/…
@dtbyler Running parallel to this is a demonization of Uighur men, who even *before* the current state of terror were widely portrayed in Han culture as violent and criminal - to which 'terrorist' has now been added.
(I should note that there are, of course, loving and genuine Han-Uighur marriages - quite often relationships formed outside of Xinjiang itself)
@dtbyler So what we have, I would say, is a government-backed campaign of sexual coercion directed at Uighur women - one that conceives *itself* as being based around marriage, but which produces broader abuse that the authorities are, AFAIK, entirely callous about
@dtbyler (Before new settlers were introduced into an area in the mid-2010s, I've heard of talks by officials for locals explaining that these were uneducated men and to be tolerant of them.)
that figure was also largely marriages between Uighur and Kazakhs, Hui, Uzbeks, etc - the actual Han-Uighur rate was probably close to 1 in 200 or 300
