Darren Byler

Last updated

Darren Byler is an American anthropologist and author. He is assistant professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. [1] Byler specializes in the Uyghurs in China and has written about the ongoing oppression of the ethnic group in China, such as through the Xinjiang internment camps. [2]

Byler has a BA in History & Visual Journalism from Kent State University, an MA in East Asian Studies from Columbia University, and a PhD in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of Washington. [3] Prior to joining Simon Fraser University, he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Colorado. [4]

Byler has worked as an advisor with faculty members and researchers at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University to build the Xinjiang Documentation Project, a project that documents the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. [3] [5] His research has been supported by Columbia University's Global Reports series and a Luce Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies Early Career Fellowship. [3]

Byler has published many of his analyses of Central Asian, Chinese, and Uyghur life and politics on his long running blog Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia. He is also a frequent contributor to The China Project.

Byler has been frequently attacked by Chinese state media, who have accused him of being an agent of the United States government, which Byler has denied. The Global Times , a newspaper run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has accused Byler of being an "anti-China figure" who makes "fabricated" allegations about "genocide and crimes against humanity" in Xinjiang. [6]

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Fraser University</span> Public university in British Columbia, Canada

Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby, Surrey, and Vancouver. The 170-hectare (420-acre) main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and comprises more than 30,000 students and 160,000 alumni. The university was created in an effort to expand higher education across Canada.

Racism in China arises from Chinese history, nationalism, sinicization, and other factors. Racism in the People's Republic of China has been documented in numerous situations. Ethnic tensions have led to numerous incidents in the country such as the Xinjiang conflict, the ongoing internment and state persecution of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, the 2010 Tibetan language protest, the 2020 Inner Mongolia protests, discrimination against Africans in particular and discrimination against Black people in general.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xinjiang internment camps</span> Chinese prison camps in the Xinjiang region

The Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers by the government of China, are internment camps operated by the government of Xinjiang and the Chinese Communist Party Provincial Standing Committee. Human Rights Watch says that they have been used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other Muslims since 2017 as part of a "people's war on terror", a policy announced in 2014. The camps have been criticized by the governments of many countries and human rights organizations for alleged human rights abuses, including mistreatment, rape, and torture, with some of them alleging genocide. Some 40 countries around the world have called on China to respect the human rights of the Uyghur community, including countries such as Canada, Germany, Turkey, Honduras and Japan. The governments of more than 35 countries have expressed support for China's government. Xinjiang internment camps have been described as "the most extreme example of China's inhumane policies against Uighurs".

In May 2014, the Government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched the "Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism" in the far west province of Xinjiang. It is an aspect of the Xinjiang conflict, the ongoing struggle by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese government to manage the ethnically diverse and tumultuous province. According to critics, the CCP and the Chinese government have used the global "war on terrorism" of the 2000s to frame separatist and ethnic unrest as acts of Islamist terrorism to legitimize its counter-insurgency policies in Xinjiang. Chinese officials have maintained that the campaign is essential for national security purposes.

Civil Servant-Family Pair Up, also known as Pair Up and Become Family, is a Chinese government policy that forces designated Uyghur families to be matched with Han Chinese civil servants, with the families forced to host the civil servants in their home. Since the late 2010s, China has vigorously promoted the policy in Xinjiang. Beginning in 2018, over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur families to monitor and assess resistance to cultural assimilation as well as to surveil religious and cultural practices. According to the official state perspective, the policy is to provide Mandarin language training as a way to better integrate Uyghurs and as a means for the poverty alleviation of the region. Policies bearing the same name have also been implemented in impoverished regions in Anhui, Tibet, as well as for left-behind children, widowed elders, the disabled, and in earthquake-affected regions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xinjiang papers</span> Collection of leaked internal Chinese government documents

The Xinjiang papers are a collection of more than 400 pages of internal Chinese government documents describing the government policy regarding Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region. In November 2019, journalists Austin Ramzy and Chris Buckley at The New York Times broke the story that characterized the documents as "one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China's ruling Communist Party in decades." According to The New York Times, the documents were leaked by a source inside the Chinese Communist Party and include a breakdown of how China created and organized the Xinjiang internment camps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Persecution of Uyghurs in China</span> Series of human rights abuses against an ethnic group in Western China

The Chinese government is committing a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang that is often characterized as persecution or as genocide. Beginning in 2014, the Chinese government, under the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, incarcerated more than an estimated one million Turkic Muslims without any legal process in internment camps. Operations from 2016 to 2021 were led by Xinjiang CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo. It is the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. The Chinese government began to wind down the camps in 2019. Amnesty International states that detainees have been increasingly transferred to the formal penal system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">China Cables</span> Leak of Chinese government documents detailing re-education camps in Xinjiang

The China Cables are a collection of secret Chinese government documents from 2017 which were leaked by exiled Uyghurs to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and published on 24 November 2019. The documents include a telegram which details the first known operations manual for running the Xinjiang internment camps, and bulletins which illustrate how China's centralized data collection system and mass surveillance tool, known as the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, uses artificial intelligence to identify people for interrogation and potential detention.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Zenz</span> German anthropologist (born 1974)

Adrian Nikolaus Zenz is a German anthropologist known for his studies of the Xinjiang internment camps and persecution of Uyghurs in China. He is a director and senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an anti-communist think tank established by the US government and based in Washington, DC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rushan Abbas</span> Uyghur American activist and advocate (born 1967)

Rushan Abbas is a Uyghur American activist and advocate from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. She is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Campaign for Uyghurs. Abbas became one of the most prominent Uyghur voices in international activism following her sister's detainment by the Chinese government in 2018.

Merdan Ghappar is a Chinese model and a prisoner of Uyghur heritage. He became known for his internment in one of China's Xinjiang re-education camps in 2020. Merdan managed to smuggle video footage and text messages from his internment camp to family members in Europe, who then passed the material on to the press. As of 5 August 2020, his status was unknown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tahir Hamut Izgil</span> Uyghur poet and film director

Tahir Hamut Izgil is a modernist Uyghur poet, filmmaker, and activist. A leader in avant-garde Uyghur poetry in the 1990s, he is known for poems and films strongly influenced by Uyghur life. Originally from Xinjiang, he is currently living in exile in the United States. His experiences as an intellectual during the rounding up of Uyghurs and his emigration to the west is described in his memoir Waiting to Be Arrested at Midnight, published in 2023.

The Xinjiang Victims Database is a database which attempts to record all currently known individuals who are detained in Xinjiang internment camps in China. The database has documented over 16,000 victims. It was founded by Gene Bunin, who started the database in September 2018.

Perhat Tursun is a Uyghur writer and poet. He is considered to be one of the most notable modern Uyghur writers. In January 2018, he was seized by Chinese authorities from Urumqi and was later reported to have been sentenced to 16 years of imprisonment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uyghur Tribunal</span> Non-governmental genocide tribunal

The Uyghur Tribunal was an independent "people's tribunal" based in the United Kingdom aiming to examine evidence regarding the ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghur people by the Government of China and to evaluate whether the abuses constitute genocide under the Genocide Convention. The tribunal was chaired by Geoffrey Nice, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milošević, who announced the creation of the tribunal in September 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rayhan Asat</span> Uyghur lawyer and human rights advocate

Rayhan Asat is a Uyghur lawyer and human rights advocate. Since 2020, she has led a public campaign for the release of her brother, Ekpar Asat, who has been held in the Xinjiang internment camp system since 2016, and on behalf of the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China. In 2021, she joined the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council as a Nonresident Senior Fellow and became a Yale World Fellow. Asat is also a Senior Fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and President of the American Turkic International Lawyers Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erkin Tuniyaz</span> Chinese politician

Erkin Tuniyaz is a Chinese politician of Uyghur ethnicity who is the current deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xinjiang Committee and chairman of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in office since 30 September 2021. He is a member of the 20th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

Internet Protocol Video Market (IPVM) is a security and surveillance industry research group and trade publication based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania that focuses on reviewing and reporting on video surveillance technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xinjiang Police Files</span> 2022 leaked documents

The Xinjiang Police Files are leaked documents from the Xinjiang internment camps, forwarded to anthropologist Adrian Zenz from an anonymous source. On May 24, 2022, an international consortium of 14 media groups published information about the files, which consist of over 10 gigabytes of speeches, images, spreadsheets and protocols dating back to 2018.

The OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China is a report published on 31 August 2022 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concerning the treatment of Uyghurs and other largely Muslim groups in China. The report concluded that "[t]he extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity." Human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet released the report shortly before leaving the office.

References

  1. Ayed, Nahlah (17 February 2022). "China's high-tech repression of Uyghurs is more sinister — and lucrative — than it seems, anthropologist says". CBC Radio One . Retrieved 17 February 2022.
  2. Goldkorn, Jeremy (16 December 2021). "What is happening in Xinjiang as 2021 draws to a close?". SupChina. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 "Darren Byler - School for International Studies - Simon Fraser University". www.sfu.ca.
  4. Byler, Darren; Sanchez Boe, Caroline (24 July 2020). "Tech-enabled 'terror capitalism' is spreading worldwide. The surveillance regimes must be stopped". The Guardian . Retrieved 17 February 2022.
  5. Byler, Darren (23 October 2021). "China's internment camps in Xinjiang are a horror. Survivors and participants alike must reconcile with the truth". The Globe and Mail . Retrieved 19 February 2022.
  6. Todd, Douglas (2022-08-11). "Douglas Todd: SFU prof targeted by China for groundbreaking Uyghur research". Vancouver Sun . Retrieved 2022-08-14.
  7. Forth, Aidan (November 8, 2021). "Settler Colonialism Meets the War on Terror: The Enclosure of China's Uyghurs". Los Angeles Review of Books.
  8. "Two new books shed light on the plight of the Uyghurs". The Economist. October 28, 2021.
  9. Byler, Darren; Franceschini, Ivan; Loubere, Nicholas, eds. (2022). Xinjiang Year Zero. ANU Press. doi: 10.22459/XYZ.2021 . ISBN   9781760464943.