Xinjiang’s Muslims and the PRC
Thursday, October 24, 20193:45 PM - 5:15 PM (Pacific)
Philippines Conference Room
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, Central, 3rd Floor
Stanford, CA 94305
Sponsored by Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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News regarding increasing numbers of camps and detention facilities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China have grabbed the headlines since mid-2017. China’s deployment of high-tech surveillance and police tactics have spread throughout the region, and approximately ten million Muslim minorities in the region are under tight, top-down control. Over one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have allegedly disappeared into these internment camps, which the Chinese government and media characterize as vocational training centers. Although Beijing has recently claimed that most of the detainees have been released, evidence for this is still difficult to verify. Information dissemination regarding the region to the outside world has been closely guarded.
To gain a better understanding of what is happening in Xinjiang, a panel of experts from various scholarly disciplines will analyze the current crisis and, as importantly, do what academics do best -- provide historical context and critical social scientific analysis that broaden and deepen our understanding of the events unfolding in that region.
Speakers
Darren Byler received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington in 2018. His research focuses on Uyghur dispossession, culture work and "terror capitalism" in the city of Ürümchi, the capital of Xinjiang. He has published research articles in the Asia-Pacific Journal, Contemporary Islam, Central Asian Survey, the Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art and contributed essays to volumes on ethnography of Islam in China, transnational Chinese cinema and travel and representation. He has provided expert testimony on Uyghur human rights issues before the Canadian House of Commons and writes a regular column on these issues for SupChina. In addition, he has published Uyghur-English literary translations (with Mutellip Enwer) in Guernica and Paper Republic. He also writes and curates the digital humanities art and politics repository The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, which is hosted at livingotherwise.com.
Lauren Hansen Restrepo is Assistant Professor in Growth and Structure of Cities at Bryn Mawr College. She focuses on Chinese development planning and urbanization in Xinjiang, changes within urban Uyghur society, and state-society relations in Xinjiang’s cities. She also works on issues more broadly related to urban and economic development in conflict areas; urbanization in minority-majority regions; housing and slum upgrading; Chinese city planning; cross-border economic and development planning in Western China and Central Asia; development planning and practice in authoritarian states; gender and development. Her book manuscript, Chinese Construction at the New Frontier: The Government of Uyghur Identity in Urban Xinjiang, combines ethnographic research with historical and policy analysis to assess the relationship between urban development, social control, and identity politics among upwardly mobile Uyghurs in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.