China’s “concentration camps” for Muslims

Worldly

Zack and Alex are joined by James Palmer, an editor at Foreign Policy magazine, to discuss a terrible and under-discussed humanitarian crisis: China’s repression of its Uighur Muslim minority. In Xinjiang province, where most Uighurs live, China has set up a series of concentration camps designed to brainwash Uighurs and stamp out their culture and religion. As many as 1 million people are currently in those camps. The Worldly team breaks down how this is happening, what it says about modern China, and what (if anything) the world can do to stop it. Uighurs, explained James Palmer shouted out this piece on Uighur camps by Rian Thum, and an older piece he himself had written called The Strangers He also cited the Urumqi riots as part of the lead up to the introduction of the camps. This New York Times piece provides more details about those. Palmer mentioned that a prominent Uighur footballer was sent to the camps. His story here. Here’s more on China’s social credit score and use of facial recognition software — both of which Palmer suggest have been blown out of proportion. He also talked about the failure of facial recognition software in England. Zack mentioned a BuzzFeed report that dug into apps used to police the Chinese public. Groups that aim to “Free Tibet” remain, including this one.

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