Families having fun in a newly built park, a child revising, book in hand in a quiet street of a “old center” refurbished, a couple, hand in hand in front of a mosque: Gilles Sabrié’s photos illustrate scenes of daily life in Chinese cities. However, all these cities are located in Xinjiang, the region where the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities live, victims of fierce repression by the Chinese authorities. For those who have followed the news in Xinjiang in recent years, the banality of the scenes captured by the photographer is striking.
There “Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region”located in northwest China, has always been tightly controlled, but the pressure was heightened after deadly riots in 2009. As attacks increased, Beijing launched the “Strike Hard” campaign in 2014. Two years later, a new Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary for the region made the police ubiquitous and set up concentration camps. ” re-education “soon to be renamed “vocational training centers”. More than a million Uighurs, or almost one in ten, have been there “educated”, according to the authorities. Xinjiang at the time looked like an open-air prison.
And then, slowly, we saw a few fewer police officers, fewer checkpoints. In 2019, the Chinese authorities, under pressure from the international community, claimed that all “students” had been “graduates”, and regained their freedom. They remain largely controlled: by the police, by networks of neighborhood and village committees, or by their employers, since many of them have been enrolled in “poverty reduction”, sent to the four corners of the region or the country to work in factories. Refusing is not an option, hence the forced labor charges against Beijing.
To restore economy
But a new Xinjiang is emerging after years of repression and three years of an extreme zero Covid policy. The authorities consider that they have succeeded in “eradicate extremism”, but the people of Xinjiang know that at the slightest misstep, they risk being sent to a camp or directly to prison. Difficult to have a precise glance on the evolution of the system of internment. China says re-education camps have closed, but the prison population has exploded.
Gilles Sabrié’s photos illustrate this new phase in the control of Xinjiang: at the end of 2021, a new CCP secretary general for the region was appointed, with the mission of reviving the economy. He made tourism a priority. The objective today seems to be the cultural integration of Xinjiang, which must become a Chinese region like any other, the Muslim and Uighur culture reduced to the status of folklore, to entertain tourists. The best-known mosques see more tourists than worshipers, most of whom avoid places of worship for fear of being seen as “radicals”.
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