Do you know that there is a city on Earth that actually lives in a dystopian future? and it's terrifying.
The Uighurs are mostly Muslims, and number about 11 million in western China’s Xinjiang region. They see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations, and their language is similar to Turkish.
But in recent decades, there’s been a mass migration of Han Chinese (China’s ethnic majority) to Xinjiang, and the Uighurs feel their culture and livelihoods are under threat.
Nowhere in the world, not even in North Korea, is the population monitored as strictly as it is in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Oppression has been in place for years, but has worsened massively in recent months.
- Uighurs can no longer openly practice Islam
- Men are not allowed to wear beards. Exception only for old people
- They can no longer learn their native language at school
- They cannot move freely around the country and cannot leave it
- All mosques have been turned into shops and office centers
Beijing has also turned Xinjiang into a security state that is extreme even by China’s standards, being a police state itself. The provincial government has recruited over 90,000 police officers in the last two years alone - twice as many as it recruited in the previous seven years.
At the same time, Beijing is equipping the far-western region with state-of-the-art surveillance technology, with cameras illuminating every street all over the region, from the capital Urumqi to the most remote mountain village. Iris scanners and WiFi sniffers are in use in stations, airports and at the ubiquitous checkpoints - tools and programs that allow data traffic from wireless networks to be monitored.
Checkpoints are installed in every district of the city. In simple terms, you can not get from one area of the city to another without passing the checkpoint and the police.
The data is then collated by an “integrated joint operations platform” that also stores further data on the populace – from consumer habits to banking activity, health status and indeed the DNA profile of every single inhabitant of Xinjiang.
Anyone with a potentially suspicious data trail can be detained. The government has built up a grid of hundreds of re-education camps. Tens of thousands of people have disappeared into them in recent months.
“Qu xuexi,” meaning to go or be sent to study, is one of the most common expressions in Xinjiang these days. It is a euphemism for having been taken away and not having been seen or heard from since. The “schools” are re-education centers in which the detainees are being forced to take courses in Chinese and patriotism, without any indictment, due process or a fair hearing.
Xinjiang, one of the most remote and backward regions in booming China, has become a real-life dystopia. It provides a glimpse of what an authoritarian regime armed with 21st century technology is capable of.
Uighurs are very intimidated and refuse to talk to the press, even if they miraculously escaped the country.
What’s happening in China is terrible. Maybe some people finally realize that the concentration camps are the reality of our time. There are concentration camps in America too. Don’t forget that.
