Adam Hunerven
This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the systematic repression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Northwest China.
This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the systematic repression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Northwest China.
Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2017, the author documents how China’s “People’s War on Terror,” declared in May 2014, has transformed the Uyghur homeland into an open-air prison.
The article traces the historical roots of Han Chinese settler colonialism in the region, examining how socialist-era multiculturalism gave way to capitalist development and eventually to a comprehensive system of racialized policing and mass detention.
The author argues that the crisis facing Uyghurs cannot be understood simply as “ethnic conflict” or “counter-terrorism” but rather as a process of social elimination that combines capitalist dispossession with terror rhetoric. By 2017, an estimated one million Uyghurs had been detained in “transformation through education” centres, where they face forced political indoctrination, linguistic assimilation, and systematic efforts to destroy their religious and cultural identity. Through first-hand testimony from Uyghur interlocutors, the article reveals the profound psychological trauma—what Uyghurs themselves describe as “spirit breaking”—inflicted upon an entire people. [MJ]
The author argues that the crisis facing Uyghurs cannot be understood simply as “ethnic conflict” or “counter-terrorism” but rather as a process of social elimination that combines capitalist dispossession with terror rhetoric. By 2017, an estimated one million Uyghurs had been detained in “transformation through education” centres, where they face forced political indoctrination, linguistic assimilation, and systematic efforts to destroy their religious and cultural identity. Through first-hand testimony from Uyghur interlocutors, the article reveals the profound psychological trauma—what Uyghurs themselves describe as “spirit breaking”—inflicted upon an entire people. [MJ]
Continue @ ESSF.
No comments