Uyghur women are trapped in China’s extensive network of abuse

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Recently, many around the world acknowledged International Women’s Day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. In China, it is an official holiday where women enjoy a half-day off from work. Chinese retailers have leveraged it into a major shopping event called “Queen’s Day.” The irony of a day encouraging women to buy clothing is that many of these clothes are being made on the backs of various ethnic and religious groups of women in China. While the holiday may have passed, the atrocities the Chinese government is committing against women and Uyghurs in China have not.

The Uyghur people in Xinjiang, a western province of China also known as East Turkistan, are experiencing a brutal government campaign of genocide designed to destroy their core religious and cultural identity. Chinese authorities have implemented a repressive military-police state where Uyghurs and other largely Muslim Turkic groups face intrusive technological surveillance and imprisonment in so-called “reeducation” camps.