NEW: Hidden in the mountains near the China-Kazakhstan border lies a fast-growing internment camp capable of holding thousands. Extensive interviews w 3 ex-detainees & an architectural analysis helped us digitally reconstruct it. From me & @alisonkilling

buzzfeednews.com/article/meghar… Mongolküre, or Zhaosu in Chinese, is an idyllic mountain county with a dark secret. This internment camp grew to 10 times its original size within just a year and a half after beginning as a pre-trial detention complex. It now includes dorms, admin buildings and factories.

NEW: China secretly built scores of massive new prison and internment camps in the past 3 years, escalating its campaign against Muslim minorities even after it publicly claimed the detainees were been set free

Some camps can hold >10,000 people.
buzzfeednews.com/article/meghar… Our extensive analysis of satellite images found more than 260 structures built since 2017 that bear the hallmarks of fortified detention compounds —  least one in nearly every county in the far-west region of Xinjiang. Before this, a few dozen camp locations were known.

Thread. When architect & geolocation wiz @alisonkilling messaged me saying it was possible to identify pedestrians' real names and track their paths through city streets using public Instagram stories, I couldn't believe it. So we set out to do it. buzzfeednews.com/article/meghar… @alisonkilling Turns out it was scarily easy to do. Here's how we did it. We matched Insta stories from Times Square to streaming video feeds put up by tourism company EarthCam. Using just 1 HOUR of footage, we IDed names, addresses, social media etc. of 6 people & tracked their movements.

Seeing people in international media suggesting the Sri Lankan government was justified in blocking Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube & other platforms over misinformation fears. This is super problematic. And I say this as someone who's written a lot about misinfo on FB. Here's why. News media is controlled in SL and journalists under lots of pressure, so people seeking legitimate information also rely on social media. VPNs are also widely used, so hate groups can get on these platforms anyway. Blocking a site is not the same as moderating content.

This is a big big deal. 1) almost no other country in the Muslim world has made a statement this strong (except maybe Malaysia) 2) Turkey is speaking up despite $3.6 billion in infrastructure funding from China and undoubtedly very heavy diplomatic pressure

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1094280491807715328

Some context— in 2015 a wave of protests & riots in Istanbul over China’s treatment of Uighurs, whose culture is close to Turkish culture, caused friction between China and Turkey. This was also a time when Uighur migrants were escaping China and landing in Turkey.

More than 140 foreign policy professionals including academics, think tankers, former diplomats & ex-foreign ministers are calling for China to immediately release detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Will tweet a couple thoughts on this. buzzfeednews.com/article/meghar… 1) Most of the people on this list are respected China specialists, and are also not known primarily as China hawks. Many have spent whole careers engaging with China/Chinese officials in different capacities.

Facebook commissioned a human rights assessment of its role in Myanmar, where everyone from UN officials to civil society groups have criticized it for doing little to moderate content that incited violence & hate against Rohingya Muslims. A few thoughts newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/11/m… 1) This assessment comes after years of public and private pressure from civil society groups in Myanmar, who have, in some cases, put their own safety at risk to flag problematic content to Facebook (that the company's own content moderators should be catching)

Some news from me— I'm really excited to be moving to a new role @BuzzFeedNews focusing on technology and human rights. I'll be reporting from the Middle East and beyond. I'm looking forward to continuing to report on tech companies, authoritarianism, surveillance & other issues. It is bittersweet to leave Beijing after spending six wonderful and eye-opening years as a journalist there. In May, China's Foreign Ministry declined to issue me a new journalist visa. They say this is a process thing, we are not totally clear why.

Seeing journalists in the US writing about the human rights crisis in Xinjiang for the first time. That's great! Just pointing out a few small/factual aspects of the story that might be missed by those new to it. 1) Xinjiang is not a province of China, it's a region. 2) Xinjiang is called an "autonomous region" but there's literally nothing autonomous about it so I wouldn't advise any independent journalist to call it that. 3) Uighurs aren't the only Muslims in China, there are also ~10 million Hui Muslims as well as ethnic Kazakhs & others

This groundbreaking story focuses mostly on Google's apparent planned launch of a censored search app. But there's also another issue here, which is the extent to which Google's unnamed China-based partner will provide user data to the Chinese government.

https://twitter.com/theintercept/status/1024585486474641408

Internet companies in China (both domestic and foreign) also contend with lots of requests from govt bodies including local, regional & national; law enforcement & not, for censorship. It's not just a matter of a certain blacklist of words set by the central government ...

At risk of piling on, here's some context from Asia. Facebook actually has banned pages belonging to extremists who are egregious purveyors of hate speech & conspiracy theories in places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka, especially certain ethnonationalist groups and personalities ...

https://twitter.com/facebook/status/1017477222083411968

e.g. Wirathu in Myanmar and Bodu Bala Sena in Sri Lanka. When it comes to groups like these, it's really tough to separate "fake news" from hate speech — a popular conspiracy theory alleging Muslims are secretly sterilizing Buddhist women, for instance, could arguably be both ...

2 American friends were traveling in Xinjiang this month and asked me to share some photos and observations in a thread. They came away shocked at the level of militarization. As tourists they moved around freely in a way that's become tougher for journalists to do. About them — they lived in Beijing for many years, speak Chinese perfectly & know the country well. They are both white (can't pass as either Han or Uighur). Neither works on human rights, foreign policy or anything "sensitive." Asked not to be named because of visa concerns.