The first account of one of the world’s most pressing humanitarian catastrophes. 

This book reveals how China has used the US-led Global War on Terror as cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghur people. China’s actions, it argues, have emboldened states around the globe to persecute ethnic minorities and severely repress domestic opposition in the name of combatting terrorism. Within weeks of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Chinese government announced that it faced a serious terrorist threat from its largely Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority. 

Nearly two decades later, of the 11 million Uyghurs living in China today, more than one million have been detained in so-called re-education camps, victims of what has become the largest program of mass incarceration and surveillance in the world. Drawing on extensive interviews with Uyghurs in Xinjiang, as well as refugee communities and exiles, Sean Roberts tells a story that is not just about state policies, but about Uyghur responses to these devastating government programs. 

Providing a lucid and far-reaching analysis of China’s cultural genocide, The War on the Uyghurs allows the voices of those caught up in the human tragedy to be heard for the first time.