What is happening in Xinjiang as 2021 draws to a close?

Darren Byler is an anthropologist and professor at Simon Fraser University who first visited Xinjiang in 2003. Traditional Uyghur cultural practices was his main area of interest back then, but he has since become a reluctant expert on China’s oppressive surveillance and internment policies that have transformed a region.

Byler writes a regular column for SupChina, and is the author of a new book that is perhaps the best short guide to the Xinjiang dystopia as it currently stands. In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony is a highly readable series of personal stories and vignettes from real people that shows how the Chinese state is using technology and its vast powers to pursue a cruel and ruthless policy of social engineering.

I caught up with him recently for an update on the situation in Xinjiang.

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