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Jun 2023
39m 40s

Drum Tower: The cage—part two

The Economist
About this episode

In this second episode of a special two-part series, The Economist’s senior China correspondent, Alice Su, investigates China’s repressions of Uyghurs at home and abroad.

From 2017 to 2019 China locked up more than a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in  "re-education camps" in Xinjiang. During that time most Uyghurs living overseas were cut off from everyone they knew in China. Recently the Chinese Communist Party has closed many of the camps. It wants the world to forget what happened in Xinjiang and what is still happening today. It wants Uyghurs inside and outside China to keep quiet.

Alice Su explores how the Chinese state is able to control Uyghurs overseas through their families. She speaks to Nigara and Kewser, two Uyghurs who left China, about making the biggest decision of their lives; family or freedom?

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