All posts tagged: Gene Bunin

An Interview with Gene Bunin of the Xinjiang Victim Database & Uyghur Pulse

Published by Gene A. Bunin

This interview between Gene Bunin and Matt Dagher-Margosian first appeared on the website Asia Art Tours. It is reprinted here with permission. Asia Art Tours and The Arts of Travel podcast hosts print and audio conversations, centered on creative voices in Asia. For more conversations on Japan, Thailand , Indonesia, Taiwan and elsewhere, come visit their platforms, or get in touch at matt@asiaarttours.com As Armenian and Jewish founders of Asia Art Tours,  we are keenly aware of the pain and suffering of genocide. Right now, the genocide in Xinjiang is one of the most urgent crises the world must face. To shine light on this mass atrocity, I spoke to the founder of the Xinjiang Victim Database, and Uyghur Pulse – Gene Bunin. Asia Art Tours: For people who are unfamiliar with your work, could you discuss Uyghur Pulse, the Xinjiang Victims Database and Shabit.biz? What are the objectives of these projects? And what obstacles have you faced in trying to continue to bring attention to these issues? Gene Bunin: The Xinjiang Victims Database is a multi-purpose web platform based at shahit.biz. Like …

How Kyrgyzstan abandoned its own in Xinjiang while Kazakhstan didn’t

Published by Gene A. Bunin

While not exactly an odyssey, the trip from Kyrgyzstan’s capital of Bishkek to Kazakhstan’s “southern capital” of Almaty still makes for a day-long hassle. For many, it starts with climbing into a van at Bishkek’s western bus terminal, waiting up to an hour for the car to fill up, and then making a forty-minute drive to the border, where you get out, take all your things, and prepare for potentially grueling and chaotic lines – the depressing, lose-faith-in-humanity kind where people shove and curse, fighting to get inside and escape the weather, some with small children and others with push carts stacked overly high with goods. There, the border control guards – first the Kyrgyz and then, one river later, the Kazakh – check your things and documents and, depending on their mood and personality, decide whether or not to give you a hard time. Making it past them, you wait another thirty minutes to an hour for the van to get through its own inspection channel, after which you get back on and continue …

Gene A. Bunin: How the “Happiest Muslims in the World” are Coping with Their Happiness

Published by Gene A. Bunin

Disclaimer: The greater part of this article seeks to convey the words, views, and behaviors of ethnic Uyghurs residing in both China proper (“inner China”) and China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as observed by the author over the previous year and a half. So as to protect the people mentioned, I have intentionally obscured or changed the relevant names, locations, and times, as well as any other details that could aid in fixing a given person’s identity. Quotes from individuals are from unrecorded conversations, in Uyghur, and as such are subject to some corruption due to both imperfect memory and translation. While this admittedly runs the risk of vague reporting, I do believe that the essential has been preserved and thereby hope for the reader’s understanding.   It was about a year ago that I first walked into Karim’s restaurant, intending to write about it as part of the food guide I was putting together about Uyghur restaurants in inner China. While my travels for this project would result in my visiting close to 200 …