Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized: China’s Relentless Persecution of Uyghurs and Other Ethnic Minorities

Innocent people face imprisonment, exile, and worse in this grim debut. Journalist Beck recaps the conflict between the Chinese government and Uyghurs and other Turkic nationalities in the province of Xinjiang, starting with late 1990s riots by Uyghurs over discrimination, a political current the Chinese government increasingly cast as an Islamist separatist movement, and continuing through the government’s establishment of vast detainment camps. Beck follows four people caught in the vise, among them Adiljan, a Uyghur businessman who went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, an act that Chinese officials considered an Islamist red flag, and was compelled to remain abroad when he learned authorities were seeking his arrest; and Saira, a Kazakh businesswoman detained on nothing more than official paranoia, which was heightened by the discovery of Kazakh literature in her possession. Their stories convey how Xinjiang was gradually inundated with checkpoints and surveillance; some of the profile subjects were locked up in “education and training centers” where they were subjected to anti-Muslim propaganda and violence, including the use of “shock batons” on detainees. Throughout, Beck creates a vivid panorama of chilling brutality mixed with Kafkaesque absurdism. (“Saira said she did not know why she had been taken. ‘In that case,’ the Chinese woman said unhurriedly. ‘You’ll probably be in here for something like ten years. Maybe twenty.’ ”) It’s a searing indictment of repression in Xinjiang. (May)