Far from the booming metropolis of Beijing, China is building a sprawling system that combines dystopian technology and human policing. “It’s a kind of frontline laboratory for surveillance. KASHGAR, China — This is a city where growing a beard can get you reported to the police. So can inviting too many people to your wedding, or naming your…
One member of the Uyghur diaspora explains why Uyghurs abroad raise their banners outside Chinese embassies. A question I am often asked is why I participate in protests and demonstrations. What impact do our blue and white placards and hoarse voices have against a stoic Canberran building that hoists the Chinese flag? Perhaps my questioners see…
TO THE BRINK In the early hours of New Year’s Day in 2017, a heavily armed gunmanstormed Reina, an exclusive Istanbul nightclub on the Bosphorus coast, murdering 39. ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre, but the Turkish deputy prime minister swiftly made an incendiary claim: the perpetrators, he said, were “probably” Uyghur—the ethnically Turkic Muslims indigenous to the region…
