Introduction

After months of denials amidst growing international scrutiny and concern, in October 2018 Chinese authorities publicly admitted the existence of a system of prison camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). By that point, the camps, officially labelled as “re-education” facilities, had been exposed for several months in the international media. A number of scholars, based mostly in European and North American institutions, had uncovered the imprisonment of over a million people in Xinjiang through a combined analysis of satellite images, government websites, media reports, and long-term ethnographic engagement with local communities.