Inside Xinjiang’s Prison State

February 26, 2021

The New Yorker Ben Mauk

During this time, the camp was growing. According to an analysis of satellite photos, the facility had expanded fivefold since Otarbai was first held there, in 2017, and construction had begun on an approximately twenty-thousand-square-foot factory and warehouse. In November, Otarbai “graduated” from his studies and joined other detainees on the factory floor producing children’s clothing.

Official claims that camp populations are declining may therefore be accurate, as detainees are increasingly sent to work in factories and on farms, or else sentenced and transferred to conventional prisons.