War on the Uyghurs, The: China's Campaign Against Xinjiang's Muslims

- Blurb -

In this explosive book, Sean Roberts reveals how China has been using the US-led global war on terror as cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghur people. China's actions, he argues, have emboldened states around the globe to persecute ethnic minorities and severely repress domestic opposition in the name of combatting terrorism.Within weeks of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Chinese government warned that it faced a serious terrorist threat from its largely Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority. Nearly two decades later, of the 11 million Uyghurs living in China today, more than 1 million have been detained in so-called reeducation camps, victims of what has become the largest program of mass incarceration and surveillance in the world. Roberts describes how the Chinese government deliberately implicated the Uyghurs in the global war on terror and and branded them as a dangerous threat with links to al-Qaeda. He argues that the reframing of Uyghur domestic dissent as international terrorism provided justification and inspiration for a systematic campaign to erase Uyghur identity. A nominal Uyghur militant threat only emerged after more than a decade of Chinese suppression and little justifies the response.A gripping and moving account of one of the world's most pressing humanitarian catastophes, The War on the Uyghurs draws on Roberts's own in-depth interviews with Uyghurs, enabling their own voices to be heard.