Surveillance and Repression of Muslim Minorities - Panel 1 | SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 13/03/2020

'Surveillance and Repression of Muslim Minorities: Xinjiang and Beyond - Panel 1' was a seminar given by various speakers on the 7th of March 2020. Read more at http://bit.ly/2W9NUJp

This public event aims to show how China’s extensive repression of the Muslim population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China connects to regional and global trends. Since 2016, an estimated 1.5 million Turkic Muslims have been detained in internment camps, while the wider population is subject to invasive systems of surveillance, severe restriction of freedoms, and disciplinary regimes of political re-education. This systematic and targeted set of policies, which purport to have a basis in Chinese law, harness the latest advances in surveillance technologies and are related to contemporary global flows of ideology and capital, notably the global ‘War on Terror’ and Islamophobia.

This conference aims to understand the developments inside Xinjiang within this wider context, examining the continuities, parallels, and direct links between the repression of Muslims in Xinjiang and the experience of other Muslim minorities in Asia and across the globe. We situate China’s policies in Xinjiang in the context of its wider goals of economic, political and diplomatic expansion, and thus who profits from this wave of repression. We consider the continuities between China’s governance of Xinjiang and the actions of other states, historically and today.

Participants in the event will include academics and practitioners focusing on Xinjiang, on examples of repression from other regions and on the three overarching themes that will anchor our discussions, outlined below. We will also consider the question of what our response to this crisis should be.