{"id":4140,"date":"2018-10-08T09:52:58","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T09:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2018\/10\/08\/what-satellite-images-can-show-us-about-re-education-camps-xinjiang\/"},"modified":"2018-10-08T09:52:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T09:52:58","slug":"what-satellite-images-can-show-us-about-re-education-camps-xinjiang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/what-satellite-images-can-show-us-about-re-education-camps-xinjiang\/","title":{"rendered":"What Satellite Images Can Show Us about \u2018Re-education\u2019 Camps in Xinjiang"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, located in China\u2019s northwest near Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and other Central Asian countries, is holding ethnic Muslims en masse in detention facilities the Chinese government euphemistically calls \u201ctransformation through education centers<\/a>.\u201d We know this from a year-long trickle of news reporting<\/a> from Xinjiang: from citizens bearing witness<\/a> to Radio Free Asia about what they\u2019re seeing<\/a> firsthand, from international reporters<\/a> doggedly traveling throughout the region despite heavy surveillance and intimidation<\/a>from security personnel, from released detainees<\/a> describing their experiences<\/a> in these camps, and from reports<\/a> from relatives<\/a> of those detained who are also coming under Chinese government pressure, as well as from more scholarly analyses looking at government procurement bids<\/a>, public security hiring<\/a>, and regional security spending<\/a>that reveal the scope and scale of the Party-state\u2019s mobilization of resources to establish these camps.<\/p>\n

Yet, without free and consistent international access to all parts of Xinjiang, let alone to the facilities in question, the Chinese government remains at liberty to deny<\/a> their existence\u2014or at least their carceral nature. Indeed, Chinese officials recently did just that at a session of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, arguing that \u201c[t]here are no such things as \u2018re-education centers\u2019 or \u2018counter-extremism training centers\u2019 in Xinjiang . . . With respect to criminals involved only in minor offenses, the authority provides them with assistance and education by assigning them to vocational education and employment training centers to acquire employment skills and legal knowledge, with a view to assisting in their rehabilitation and reintegration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claims that the camps are merely vocational training centers seem even less credible after one looks at the work of Shawn Zhang. A law student focusing on jurisprudence at the University of British Columbia in Canada, in May Zhang began scouring Google Earth for evidence of detentions in Xinjiang\u2014matching up the addresses he found in documents related to the camps that he found online with satellite images; learning to recognize the distinguishing characteristics of camps, both in written materials and in images so that he could confidently identify them even in cases where details were scant. His collection<\/a> of satellite images is a key and oft-cited piece of evidence of the camps\u2019 existence, laying bare the hard physical contours of a campaign of ethnic and religious repression. Zhang, a Chinese citizen, continues to do this research despite the fact that the Chinese police have previously pressured his family<\/a> related to other content he has posted online.<\/p>\n

Many of Zhang\u2019s findings cannot be independently verified due to restrictions on international reporting and foreign government access (though recent reporting<\/a> from The Wall Street Journal<\/em> strongly suggests that Zhang\u2019s work is indeed on the right track). But it is precisely because of these restrictions that Zhang\u2019s research has been so vital to shedding light on what is happening in Xinjiang. The following is an edited transcript of several phone conversations I had with Zhang about his research.<\/p>\n