New large-scale construction has been popping up in the deserts of western China. From the sky, these buildings look much like factories or schools. But closer inspection reveals watchtowers and perimeter walls lined with barbed wire — they’re internment camps.
China’s secret internment camps
And the internet detectives working to find them.
Inside these camps, China is detaining as many as 1 million Uighurs, the country’s predominantly Muslim minority. China sees its Uighur population as a separatist threat — one that stands in the way of its global ambitions.
At first, China denied the existence of these camps. But a network of activists and academics around the world used basic internet tools to document and track the locations of these camps before the global superpower could remove any trace of them.
Check out the video above to learn more about who the Uighur people are, why China is detaining them, and the “internet sleuths” documenting these camps.
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