SPIEGEL reports on Xinjiang: Inside the Gulag

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Watchtowers and barbed wire: This is what detention centers in Xinjiang look like (here in Dabancheng district)

Photo: Thomas Peter / REUTERS

The Xinjiang Police Files detail the systematic repression of the Uyghur Muslim minority by Chinese authorities.

Up to a million people were detained, abused and "transformed" in camps in the Xinjiang region.

The biggest leak on this topic to date shows the brutality of the Chinese camps and refutes the Chinese government's claim that people are there voluntarily.

China's repressive policies in Xinjiang began decades ago (read a historical overview here).

SPIEGEL has been reporting on Beijing's control mania in the region for years. Reporters from the magazine have visited Xinjiang several times and documented how Beijing's power apparatus was tightening its grip.

Former China correspondent Bernhard Zand traveled to Xinjiang in 2014 and 2018 and observed China using Islamist terrorist attacks to justify the establishment of a surveillance state.

Reporter Katrin Kuntz spoke to Kazakhs and Uyghurs who were held captive in detention camps and tortured and then escaped.

China correspondent Georg Fahrion last drove through Xinjiang in 2021 and warned of a new phase of Beijing's repression.

Research in the region has become increasingly difficult over the years.

In addition to the ubiquitous surveillance by spies years ago, there has been increasingly sophisticated digital surveillance and, since the beginning of the pandemic, the rigid corona rules with which the Chinese authorities have further restricted the freedom of movement of journalists.

The most important SPIEGEL texts on the subject at a glance:

• The Anger in the West

  – At the farthest fringe of their empire, Beijing's leaders have a problem with terrorism.

  They ruthlessly developed the Xinjiang region, but now the Muslim Uyghurs are rebelling.

  
  

  By Bernhard Zand, published June 1, 2014

• In the penal colony

  - In Xinjiang, Beijing is building a surveillance state unlike anything the world has seen before.

  The country wants to use the most modern methods to control the Muslim Uyghur minority.

  A journey through an eerily silent region.

  
  

  By Bernhard Zand, published on July 20, 2018

• If one was missing, the guards said they had been sent "to school"

  - A million Muslims are being held in camps in north-west China.

  Ex-prisoners tell of their suffering.

  
  

  By Katrin Kuntz, published November 9, 2018

• “This system is tantamount to a cultural genocide” 

  The German Xinjiang researcher Adrian Zenz describes how China is detaining more than a million Muslim Uyghurs – and why the responsibility for this lies directly with the head of state Xi Jinping. 

  
  

  By Bernhard Zand, published November 22, 2019

• Look to Xinjiang!

  – The West must not tolerate China's cruel actions against the Uyghurs.

  A comment .

  
  

  By Bernhard Zand, published November 29, 2019

• This is how China exploits the Uyghurs

  – China uses hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs as forced laborers in the cotton harvest, writes the German Xinjiang researcher Adrian Zenz in a study.

  Here he explains the background.

  
  

  By Georg Fahrion, published December 19, 2020

• »China stole three years of my life«

  – Uyghur Gulbahar Haitiwaji was held captive for years in a Chinese state-run re-education camp in Xinjiang.

  Here she talks about her struggle for survival.

  
  

  By Katrin Kuntz, published February 4, 2021

• In the spooky Disneyland of Xinjiang

  - Western countries accuse China of genocide against the Uighurs in Xinjiang.

  Beijing claims that everything is fine in the home region of the Muslim minority.

  Journey through a Land of Deception.

  
  

  By Georg Fahrion, published on May 25, 2021