In a far corner of
northwestern China,
a car drives along a wall
lined with barbed wire,
heading towards
what looks like a
standard apartment complex.
Access here is restricted,
and the cameraperson
is filming secretly …
… because this is no
ordinary residence.
It’s part of a contentious
labor resettlement program
run by the
Chinese government
to extend state control over
Muslim minorities, mostly
Uighurs, by moving them
from one part of China
to work in another.
This covert,
low-quality footage
that we’ve adjusted
to reveal some details,
and obscure others, gives
us some rare insights
into how people
in this program
live and are indoctrinated.
Over the last few years,
the mass incarceration
of more than a million
Uighurs and Kazakhs
by the Chinese government has
led to international outrage.
These labor programs are
part of that larger story.
Let’s take a closer look at
the compound we showed you
at the beginning.
It’s in Xinjiang, in the
northern city of Kuitun,
where the population is mostly
China’s Han ethnic majority.
But the workers
in the compound
are Uighurs, and
other minorities
transferred there
from their homes
in Hotan and Kashgar,
hundreds of miles away.
At the Kuitun complex there
are multiple dormitories.
We see that right around the
time the transfer started
in 2017, a security checkpoint
and another building,
a cafeteria, were
built at the site.
The cameraperson is
now shooting inside
of the cafeteria.
We can see the
compound’s residents.
They all work as
street cleaners.
A sign describing the
program calls them Kashgar
and Hotan surplus labor.
It also lists
instructions for how they
should conduct themselves.
And another poster
offers guidelines
on how to interact with
the local population.
This program and
others like it
have led to the relocation
of hundreds of thousands
of Uighurs away from
their homes and families.
But government
propaganda openly
promotes these as
poverty alleviation initiatives.
What’s at stake here
is about more than just
putting people into
labor programs.
The bigger goal
is to turn Uighurs
and other ethnic minorities
away from their own heritage,
to be more in line with the
rest of Communist China.
Back at the
compound, the rules
strictly limit when and
where the workers can go.
We hear about this as a
cameraperson meets residents
in the sleeping quarters.
This man was pressured to
come here a year earlier,
leaving his family, a wife
and young child, behind.
His life here includes
mandatory Mandarin classes
in the evenings.
And despite the
government’s claim
that they are lifting these
workers out of poverty,
he says he’s only
making a third of what
he did back home.
Yarkand County is the
home he left behind.
For Uighurs in
towns like these,
the future is becoming
increasingly uncertain
because the decision,
whether to stay or go,
is often no longer
in their hands.
