Why Has China Targeted Minorities in Xinjiang?

A person looking up at a confined space with a Chinese flag superimposed on top.
Illustration by Golden Cosmos

In a special episode on the crisis in Xinjiang region of China, the staff writer Raffi Khatchadourian investigates Xi Jinping’s government’s severe repression of Muslim minorities, principally Uyghurs and Kazakhs. Accounts from a camp survivor and a woman who fled detainment show how, even outside the camps, life in the province of Xinjiang became a prison. The crisis meets the United Nations’ definition of genocide, and the U.S. State Department has also made that determination. With the 2022 Winter Olympics coming up in Beijing, what can the world do about Xinjiang?

Why Has China Targeted Minorities in Xinjiang?

The staff writer Raffi Khatchadourian explains how Xi Jinping’s government used an obsession with “stability” to justify a genocide against ethnic Uyghurs and Kazhaks.


Inside the Internment Camps of Xinjiang

Accounts from a camp survivor and a woman who fled detainment show how life in the Chinese region came to resemble a prison, even outside the walls of the camps.


What Can the World Do About Xinjiang?

The State Department has determined that genocide is taking place in China against ethnic minorities. The 2022 Winter Olympics are in Beijing. What should the world do about Xinjiang?


On “Night Watch” in a Xinjiang Internment Camp

A Kazakh woman imprisoned for more than a year without explanation reads the poem she wrote about a lonely night looking through the barbed wire.