art of life in chinese central asia

Uyghur Stories Need To Be Mainstreamed

Over the past several months, state culture workers in the Uyghur region have produced a series of twisted, psychologically violent videos. These short films center on the transformation of Uyghurs as a way of justifying the “reeducation” camp system that has taken away the freedom of as many as 1.5 million Uyghurs. In one of the videos, a young woman discusses how she was forced into an arranged...

‘Saved’ By State Terror: Gendered Violence And Propaganda In Xinjiang

The ongoing atrocities targeting Turkic Muslim peoples in Xinjiang are, in many forms, gendered violence. As the “People’s War on Terror” campaign escalates, Han officials and settlers are removing Turkic Muslim men who they perceive as threats to “security” and “safety,” emptying out a clear path for Han settlers to insert their presence onto Uyghur and Kazakh homelands. This comes at the expense of the...

Making the Xinjiang authorities dance: 40 examples of publicized cases

For the past half-year and probably longer, I’ve admittedly been a broken record in replaying the same mantra when talking of what works in getting the oh-so-scary Xinjiang authorities to somehow curb their seemingly unbridled madness. China’s Achilles heel, I’ve continued to say, is its image, and as an insidious system that pretends to do everything “by the law” what it fears more than...

Responses to Unanswered Questions at UC Berkeley

Editorial Note: Below is a letter written to Chinese international students at UC Berkeley following an event concerning the mass internment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims that was held in March 2019. The author of the letter sent it to me after The Daily Californian declined to publish it. Following the letter I have replied to the letter in the hopes that we can open a dialogue regarding what...

A Road to Forgetting: Friendship and Memory in China’s Belt and Road Initiative

In the midst of the mass detention of ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz in the so-called ‘reeducation camps’ in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a Sino-Kazakh coproduction based on the life of Chinese musician Xian Xinghai is close to release. The Composer portrays the friendship between Xian—the mind behind the Yellow River Cantata and On the Taihang Mountains, classic patriotic ‘red’ songs that every middle school student in China...

Streaming Mainstreaming Stories: A Day of Solidarity with Uyghurs

On April 26, scholars will hold a series of events called “Mainstreaming Stories: A Day of Solidarity with Uyghurs” at locations around the world. In twelve locations they will discuss the ongoing state of emergency in the Uyghur and Kazakh homelands. Timothy Grose (Rose-Hulman Institute, Indiana); Sandrine Catris (Augusta University, Georgia) Magnus Fiskesjö (Cornell University, New York) James Liebold (LaTrobe University, Australia) June Dreyer (University of Miami,...

‘The Night Is Thick’: Uyghur Poets Respond To The Disappearance Of Their Relatives

The horrifying stories of pain and suffering in internment camps filtering out from the Uyghur homeland have filled Uyghurs around the world with a deep sorrow. The Uyghur poet Muyesser Abdulehed said she could not help but imagine being one of the million who have spent time in these camps. The guilt of having escaped and survived is sometimes overwhelming. Many Uyghurs that I...

The Future Of Uyghur Cultural — And Halal — Life In The Year Of The Pig

The Chinese version of the lunar new year came early for Uyghurs in 2019. In mid-January, Uyghurs were asked to begin to write couplets describing their hopes and dreams for the year of the pig. They began practicing their lion and dragon dances. In an unverified screenshot, a Uyghur government official made a public display of dividing up pork and distributing it among villagers near the...

The ‘Patriotism’ Of Not Speaking Uyghur

On October 27, 2018, Memtimin Ubul, a Communist Party deputy secretary of Kashgar’s Qaghaliq County, stated publicly something that had increasingly become the norm over the past two years in the Uyghur homeland. In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, it was now officially unpatriotic for Uyghur state employees to speak or write in Uyghur language. In a statement that was circulated to more than 750,000 readers, the...

A Death Sentence For a Life of Service

Note: This article written by Amy Anderson is based on interviews with Tashpolat Tiyip’s friends, students and relatives. Their identities cannot be revealed due to obvious reasons.  Sometime after he disappeared in 2017,  Tashpolat Tiyip, the president of Xinjiang University, was sentenced to death (with a two year reprieve) in a secret trial.  The Chinese state has provided no justification for this horrifying violation...