There have been many other articles about Uighurs in Xianxing, too. The Economist covered the latest reports a few months ago, which was discussed on HN:
* https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17215966
This is not a surprise, if you've been paying attention to the CCP's ham-handed attempts to handle Uighurs and to a lesser degree Muslims in general, but rather something that has been building up for years.
> The allegations came from multiple sources, including activist group Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which said in a report last month that 21 percent of all arrests recorded in China in 2017 were in Xinjiang.
I was thinking multiple orders of magnitude more reports if there really were 2 million missing people. Like, thousands of reports from disparate people. I'm not saying this didn't happen, because I have no special knowledge - all I'm saying is that if 2 million people disappeared from somewhere, I would imagine there would be no shortage of reports on it happening all over the place, and not that the reports would be routed through a few human rights groups.
Where do you expect to hear these reports, if not from human rights organizations? On Chinese censored social media or state news? It's not like the prisoners are on Twitter and Facebook.
Reading the reports, it's hard even for dedicated journalists and investigators to convince people to open up. Do you expect families of the victims to be less afraid to speak to tourists?
The articles linked in the comments in this thread provide numerous personal reports, if the statistics used to arrive at the estimates of people detained are too impersonal for your liking.
EDIT: Another report: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/new-eviden...
There are numerous reports of missing persons:
Former inmates of China’s Muslim ‘reeducation’ camps tell of brainwashing, torture (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/former-inm...)
‘We’re a people destroyed’: why Uighur Muslims across China are living in fear (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/07/why-uighur-musl...)
After U.S.-Based Reporters Exposed Abuses, China Seized Their Relatives (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/world/asia/china-xinjiang...)
Especially consider this account:
China’s mass indoctrination camps evoke Cultural Revolution (https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b):
> At first, Bekali did not want the AP to publish his account for fear that his sister and mother in China would be detained and sent to re-education.
> But on March 10, back in China, the police took his sister, Adila Bekali. A week later, on March 19, they took his mother, Amina Sadik. And on April 24, his father, Ebrayem.
> Bekali changed his mind and said he wanted to tell his story, no matter the consequences.
> “Things have already come this far,” he said. “I have nothing left to lose.”
An ethnically targeted detention would very likely involve entire family and social circles.
> Ways of breaching the great firewall are well known even within China. Shouldn't there be...numerous reports of missing persons if this is the case?
Retribution against those piercing the firewall with politically inconvenient information to the regime are also known, even inside of China; oppressive control of information is not just a technical issue.
Plus, there are reports. That's the whole issue.
40,000 people were disappeared en masse in Chile by Pinochet. That story made it out very quickly, and only a few photographs exist of it
KASHGAR, China — This is a city where growing a beard can get you reported to the police. So can inviting too many people to your wedding, or naming your child Muhammad or Medina.
Driving or taking a bus to a neighboring town, you’d hit checkpoints where armed police officers might search your phone for banned apps like Facebook or Twitter, and scroll through your text messages to see if you had used any religious language.
You would be particularly worried about making phone calls to friends and family abroad. Hours later, you might find police officers knocking at your door and asking questions that make you suspect they were listening in the whole time.
However it is another thing to claim 1m Uighurs are being forcibly detained somewhere. That is a lot of people. The Uighurs are not a large population. Everyone would know someone politically detained. We would have thousands of videos of people begging for information about the whereabouts of their loved ones.
There were a lot of Jews in Europe, once upon a time. Vast numbers of them were detained. What's so unbelievable about a massive country with a well-developed construction industry building such camps?
> The Uighurs are not a large population. Everyone would know someone politically detained.
They do, and you've given able evidence of that.
> We would have thousands of videos of people begging for information about the whereabouts of their loved ones.
Why would they do that? I might get more of their family detained. Also, it's not like these people have access to Youtube, and I have no doubt a video like you desire would be immediately censored if posted to any Chinese site.
You've been given ample evidence from dozens reputable sources about these existence of these camps and their scale. If you cared to read them, they would have answered many of your objections. Doubt at this point is irrational denialism, akin to holocaust denialism.
China isn't a western country, and I don't think you can count on being granted western-levels of freedom of movement there, especially in "sensitive" areas. For instance, I understand you need a special permit to visit Tibet, which is another province with similar ethnic tensions.
The level of surveillance in Xinjiang is so intense that the locals will often get questioned by the police about contacts with foreigners (e.g. getting a phone or skype call from abroad). The locals probably aren't eager to talk to foreigners about sensitive topics because they fear reprisal.
China also has special visas for journalists, and something tells me that that they'll deny the application if your itinerary includes areas where they don't want people poking around. If you're applying for a tourist visa, in some cases (like if you work for a newspaper) it's advised that you promise that you'll not engage in journalism during your trip. I'm guessing the Chinese will interpret a bunch of foreigners poking around sensitive areas with cameras as people practicing unauthorized journalism, put a stop to it, and maybe even deport those people for visa violations.
Are they poking around, looking for evidence of mass detentions? Or are they complaining about how they "spent more time being frustrated, bored, and whinging about lost funds than actually enjoying ourselves" (https://www.lostwithpurpose.com/why-we-didnt-like-traveling-...)?
People disappear if they talk to foreign journalists and nosy travellers with cameras and western ideals.
2007 was a different era, a lot has changed politically in the meantime.
I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but maybe you didn't see it:
China’s mass indoctrination camps evoke Cultural Revolution (https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b):
> At first, Bekali did not want the AP to publish his account for fear that his sister and mother in China would be detained and sent to re-education.
> But on March 10, back in China, the police took his sister, Adila Bekali. A week later, on March 19, they took his mother, Amina Sadik. And on April 24, his father, Ebrayem.
> Bekali changed his mind and said he wanted to tell his story, no matter the consequences.
> “Things have already come this far,” he said. “I have nothing left to lose.”
> When DER SPIEGEL visited Hotan in 2014, it was still possible to meet with a man who told us about the Chinese government's harsh measures in the surrounding towns. Such a meeting would be out of the question today, the man now informs us through a messaging app. It's not even possible to drive from one town to another without written permission, much less meet with a foreigner. "Maybe in a few years," he writes, adding: "Delete this conversation from your phone immediately. Delete everything that could be suspicious."
> There is a modern shopping center at the edge of the city, though barely one in five stores is still open. Most of the others were closed recently due to "security and stability measures," according to the official seals adhered to the doors. "Everyone was sent to school," one passerby says quietly while looking around.
> "Qu xuexi," meaning to go or be sent to study, is one of the most common expressions in Xinjiang these days. It is a euphemism for having been taken away and not having been seen or heard from since. The "schools" are re-education centers in which the detainees are being forced to take courses in Chinese and patriotism, without any indictment, due process or a fair hearing.
> More than half the people we met along the way during our journey spoke of family members or acquaintances who were "sent to school." One driver in Hotan talked about his 72-year-old grandfather. A person in Urumqi told the story of his daughter's professor. An airplane passenger spoke of his best friend.
> The stories differ, yet they all contain important parallels. Most of the people affected are men. The arrests usually occur at night or in the early morning. The reasons cited include contacts abroad, too many visits to a mosque or possessing forbidden content on a mobile phone or computer. Relatives of those who are apprehended often don't hear from them for months. And when they do manage to see them again, it's never in person but rather via video stream from the prison visitor area.
> During a conversation with a rug salesman at the market in Hotan, a woman in a short dress shows up and joins the chat. She says she works for an office nearby, and that she has taken the day off. She offers to translate the conversation with the salesman from Uighur into Chinese. No, she will later say as she walks across the nearly empty market, the store closures have nothing to do with re-education camps. "The employees were sent away for technical training," she says. Then she politely says goodbye.