"They Live Like Ghosts from Another World"-Digitized Uyghurs in Xinjiang under Digital Captivity

With the release of police files and internal documents from Xinjiang's re-education camps, as well as testimonies from Xinjiang exiles, the world has been able to get a better grasp of the facts about the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) control of the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang (XUAR) and its human rights abuses, and related publications are being translated and marketed to provide readers with an opportunity for in-depth understanding.

Since the end of last year, there have been a number of interviews with Miragul Turson, Andrea Turson, and others. Since the end of last year, Mihrigul Tursun, Andrea C. Hoffmann (Mihrigul Tursun, Andrea C. Hoffmann), "Where There's No Going Back: A Việt Nam Girl's True Experience in Xinjiang's "Re-education Camps," Japanese scholar Jun Yukura's "Xinjiang: Seventy Years of Domination by the Chinese Communist Party" and anthropologist Darren Byler's "Xinjiang: High-Tech Re-education Camps in Chinese Autonomous Region: China's High-Tech Re-education Camps. Re-education Camps: China's High-Tech Exiles" by anthropologist Darren Byler, and "Ember in the Black Koshi Mountains: A Glimpse of Uyghur Suffering and Resistance in Xinjiang under China's Terrorist Capitalism: Technological Surveillance, Exiled Youth, and Nail Households" by anthropologist Darren Byler, among others, were released in Taiwan. Among them, Darren Byler, assistant professor of international studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, has had two books published in Taiwan. Two of his books were published this summer. Baylor is an internationally recognized researcher on Uyghur society and China's control system, and as a witness to the re-education system and control of governance in Xinjiang, he has also been an active advocate for Uyghur human rights. Taking advantage of his visit to Taiwan in June to participate in an academic program, Tuan Media conducted an interview with him. In the interview, in addition to discussing his fieldwork, he also presented his research insights on technology surveillance and his personal practice. In the course of the interviews and book events, he emphasized several times that what happened to the Việt Nam could happen to you and me. Through his writing and public sharing, he hopes that readers in Taiwan and other overseas Chinese communities will recognize their own potential "complicity," and that they will recognize their own advantageous position vis-à-vis the Uyghurs and feel a sense of responsibility to "stand with the Uyghurs. One winter day in early 2015, Darren Byler, an anthropology doctoral student doing field research in Xinjiang, was invited by a young advertisement producer to visit his family's home in a Uyghur village in southern Xinjiang. Although Byler warns the young man, Mahmud, that things will not go as smoothly as he would like, Mahmud doesn't see any problem and just convinces Byler to stay the night.

The village is quite remote, 68 kilometers by bumpy road from the nearest county town, and a three-hour drive to a town that accepts foreigners in its hotels; Mahmud's family doesn't have a car, so it's obvious that Bailor would have a hard time getting out of the village if anything were to happen.

After enjoying a chicken specially prepared by the Mahmuds, his father received a phone call saying that the police were coming to visit. Then two men in police uniforms and six local farmers armed with sticks as vigilantes stormed into the house. After shaking hands and greeting the visitors, the family kept explaining to the police who Bailor was and why he was there.

The Việt Nam volunteers said they just wanted to see what a "foreigner" looked like, but the police were more serious, asking Bailor if he had a cell phone, and if so, letting them check it. "Maybe because my phone was set up in English, he couldn't quite find where my pictures were," Bailor writes in Terror Ccapitalism. "He looked at my contacts, clicked on a few apps, and after a minute or two, he handed my phone back. He handed back my cell phone.

A cold sweat broke out on Mahmoul's forehead, and his friends remained silent in their beds. Soon the police came back, snapping pictures of Baylor's passport with their cameras, and said they would contact county security to see if they needed to be taken back to the station.

It was a long wait, with neighbors suggesting ways to deal with the situation, until Mahmoul got a call from the police saying there was nothing wrong with Baylor's paperwork, and that the county police chief had approved his overnight stay in the Uyghur village and agreed to it. The group breathed a huge sigh of relief and discussed what had happened.

They think the police were nervous when they saw Bailor: "They don't know what to do, they just say yes or no when they meet a foreigner... In one way they want to give you the impression that our society is peaceful, but on the other hand, they might suspect you of being a 'terrorist'". Neighbors say that these days, Uyghur men can be arrested even if they have done something trivial, "I told you to laugh, but you didn't, and I told you to dance" (舞).