Xinjiang
Zenz's most influential work has been his research on the mass detention of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities within China's Xinjiang internment camps. [1] He was one of the first researchers to reveal the existence,size,and scope of these camps. [1] [18] [19]
Zenz's work on the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang began in February 2018 [1] and has been based on Chinese government budget plans,bidding papers,leaked documents,spreadsheets,and other official documents. [1] [20] [21] [22] In a May 2018 report published by the Washington,D.C.–based Jamestown Foundation,Zenz initially estimated the number of detained Muslims to range from 100,000 to just over 1 million. [1] He based this estimate on documents published by Istiqlal,a Turkey-based Uyghur exile media organization,which had reportedly been leaked by anonymous Chinese public security officials in the region,along with two reports on Muslim detention quotas by Shohret Hoshur for Radio Free Asia. [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] He then extrapolated from these figures and incorporated information from former detainees and public Chinese government documents that gave indications of the sizes and numbers of the camps. [1] [25]
Since then,his estimate has been cited widely,with many sources,including experts on a United Nations human rights panel,preferring to use the higher end of the estimate's range,while other scholars have questioned its accuracy. [1] [28] In March 2019,Zenz provided a higher speculative estimate to the United Nations that 1.5 million Uyghurs had been detained in camps,saying that his number accounted for both the increases in the size and scope of detention in the region as well as in public reporting on the stories of Uyghur exiles with relatives in internment camps. [1] In July 2019,Zenz wrote in the Journal of Political Risk that he speculated that 1.5 million Uyghurs had been extrajudicially detained,which he described as being "an equivalent to just under one in six adult members of a Turkic and predominantly Muslim minority group in Xinjiang". [29] In November 2019,Zenz estimated that the number of internment camps in Xinjiang had surpassed 1,000. [30] In July 2020,he wrote in Foreign Policy that his estimate had increased since November 2019,stating that a total of 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities had been extrajudicially detained in what he described as "the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust" and arguing that the Chinese government was engaging in policies that violated the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. [31]
Zenz has also researched publicly available Chinese government documents that showed that the Chinese government has spent tens of millions of dollars since 2016 on a birth control surgery program that includes cash incentives for sterilization procedures. [32] [33] [34] His research has shown that birth control violations are punishable by imprisonment in the Xinjiang camps, [33] [34] a conclusion that has been corroborated by an AP investigation,which also found that women in Xinjiang were forcibly sterilized and subjected to forced abortions. [32] According to Zenz,population growth rates in the two largest Uyghur prefectures in Xinjiang,Kashgar and Hotan,fell by 84% between 2015 and 2018,due to forced sterilization,contraception,and abortions. [35] [36] [4]
In June 2021,Zenz published a 28-page study in Central Asian Survey ,arguing that China has carried out population control in Xinjiang with the explicit "long-term" intent to reduce population growth of the Uyghur ethnic minority. [37] [38]
Zenz published the Xinjiang Police Files,a collection of official police documents he received from anonymous hackers in May 2022. [39] [40] The files include instructions on operating the camps,speeches,and thousands of mug shots taken in 2018. [41] [42]
Tibet
Zenz is the author of 'Tibetanness' Under Threat?,a 2013 study of the modern Tibetan education system. In the book,he examines the career prospects of students who major in Tibetan-language studies and explores the notion that the greater market value of Chinese-language education threatens Tibetan ethnocultural survival. [5] [9]
In September 2020,Zenz authored a report that said that 500,000 Tibetans,mostly subsistence farmers and herders,were trained in the first seven months of 2020 in military-style training centers. [43] [44] [45] [46] According to BBC News,experts have said these centers "are akin to labour camps". [45]
