Top Tweets for #stateterror

BREAKING: Former Xinjiang police officer (2014–2023) confirms that detentions and forced labor continue today. From 2023, officials detained Uyghurs who avoided forced labor or allegedly disobeyed state orders. 🧵 Zhang, the former police officer, says that under Ma Xingrui, Chen Quanguo's successor, visible repression campaigns were replaced with hidden coercion. Village committees have unilateral authority to order residents to accept labor transfers. Refusal triggers up to 15 days in detention. From 2023, authorities employed rolling, pre-emptive short-term detentions as calculated intimidation, designed to enforce total submission. Zhang observed how Uyghur culture is now nearly extinct: the village he worked in has been largely emptied of working-age adults — many are in prison or shipped away for forced labor. Speaking Uyghur is prohibited in schools. Mosques are closed or guarded 24/7. Zhang estimates a quarter of the adult population in his village was interned in re-education camps between 2017–2019, excluding those sent to prisons. Under Ma Xingrui, Chen Quanguo's successor, visible repression campaigns were replaced with hidden coercion. In 2019, Zhang worked at the Hotan County re-education headquarters where detainee records were falsified and the true scale hidden even from higher-level authorities. HOW COERCION WORKS: Village committees have unilateral authority to order residents to accept labor transfers. Refusal triggers mandatory night school, unpaid communal labor, or up to 15 days in detention facilities. My report in Foreign Policy outlines the details (link is below in the first comment)