Xinjiang Documentation Project

The Xinjiang Documentation Project, prepared by the Institute of Asian Research at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, is a multi-disciplinary research effort that collects, documents, interprets, and makes available the systemic human rights violations in Xinjiang.

The Project aims to provide a reading guide about the developments, investigate and preserve the evidence, and shed light on the scale of state violence that ethnic Uyghurs and Kazakhs have come to know as their reality.

The scope and priorities of the Project are: making the key documents available, interpreting the material for a lay audience, giving a platform to share the lived experiences, providing regular updates on the ongoing development in the region, and organizing periodic speaker series.

Full Resource Website

We archive key documents accompanied by credible, critically annotated scholarly works, promote knowledge mobilization for Canadian policy makers and for future truth and reconciliation processes for all those involved in Xinjiang, and host a permanent online portal based in Canada where these efforts are securely documented.

This Project will integrate research methods from the social sciences, humanities, and other disciplines to focus on the following domains for our documentation and analysis:

• governmental and international policy papers (e.g., China’s white papers on Xinjiang, UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch);
• key Chinese academic articles shaping the mass-incarceration framework (e.g., China’s second generation nationality policy, development strategies and organizations relevant to the camp such as the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, Counterterrorism tech-industry, legal studies);
• a safe, multimedia repository of victim testimonies and lived experiences (e.g., audio visual data, poetry, letters, drawings);
• curated sections (e.g., key events historical timelines, glossary of crackdown campaigns and policies, podcasts, special columns, as well as an interactive translation project promoting dialogues and mutual understanding between Chinese, English, Uyghur, and Kazakh readers;
• dissemination of the knowledge generated through this partnership in collected publications, academic workshops, and public events in Canada and the US.

The documentation is split up into 7 sections:

1. Timelines
   A brief overview of the events that have shaped the politics of the region in addition to the events that preceded the construction of the re-education centres and mass imprisonment of ethnic minorities.
2. Key Documents
   The preservation of key government documents, important academic papers and critical publications, informal leaks of official documents, and human rights reports relating to the treatment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. This curated repository of documents will allow the reader to build an understanding of the narrative surrounding the re-education camps in Xinjiang. Each section is a growing archive that contains a short overview of each document along with the original sources.
3. Glossary
   This section includes a brief overview of key terms and definitions that figure prominently in the research of pro-CCP academics and Chinese government policy documents.
4. Translations/ 翻译
   This section contains Chinese translations of a curated list of English publications relating to the events in Xinjiang.
5. Lived Experiences
   The collection of media links below retells lived experiences of the Uyghur people both before and during Chinese state repression. They are featured in a variety of mediums including articles, photo collections, podcasts, and videos.
6. Media Coverage
   This section offers a chronological documentation of reports on the ongoing troubling events in China’s Xinjiang since as early as 2015. The project aims to provide a reading guide about the recent developments, experts’ explanations, as well as an understanding of what ethnic Uyghurs and Kazakhs are going through on a daily basis.