CFU PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 29, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT

Contact: contact@campaignforuyghurs.org    

https://campaignforuyghurs.org/ 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) welcomes a new investigation by Alison Killing, Senior Reporter of the Financial Times (FT), exposing how the Chinese government’s genocide against Uyghurs has entered a new phase. While Chinese authorities attempt to portray the closure of some internment camps as evidence of “normalization,” the reality is that the Chinese regime’s genocidal policies have evolved, not ended.

Although some internment camps have been closed, the FT findings indicate that Chinese authorities continue to maintain an extensive system of prisons, detention facilities, and intrusive state control and surveillance throughout the Uyghur Region. Analysis of satellite imagery, government documents, local media reports, and eyewitness accounts found that the region is currently able to detain around 627,000 people without overcrowding, making it the world’s largest detention system relative to population size. 

Testimony from a former police officer who served in the region from 2014 to 2023 described a quota-based system of pre-emptive short-term detention in which individuals were held in local facilities for periods ranging from days to weeks.

The evolving strategies also point to forced assimilation, demographic engineering, and the destruction of family structures. The large-scale placement of Uyghur children into state-run boarding schools, combined with labor transfer programs that forcibly separate families, reflects a deliberate strategy to dismantle the Uyghur civilization, including through demographic engineering. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s (VOC) Director of China Studies, Dr. Adrian Zenz’s research shows a rapid expansion of boarding schools after 2018, reinforced by 2021–2022 policy directives extending institutional education to preschool-age children. By 2024, estimates suggest around 90% of children in one southern county were in boarding school systems. Uyghur language and cultural identity are systematically erased within these institutions.

The FT analysis also notes that these pressures continues into adulthood. Uyghur university students across China are subjected to intensive monitoring, religious restrictions, and political controls intended to prevent so-called “extremism” and ensure adherence to state-approved ideology.

“The Chinese government is aiming to dismantle Uyghur society through mass incarceration, cultural erasure, and the destruction of core families,” said CFU Executive Director Rushan Abbas. “This is not the end of the genocide. It is a transition into a more permanent and normalized system of repression intended to eliminate Uyghur identity over generations using a modern, and technologically enabled process.” 

These findings directly counter the Chinese Communist Party’s claims that the camps and atrocities have ended. Instead, they reveal a deeper and more institutionalized system of repression that has become less visible to the public eye while remaining devastating in scope and impact.

CFU calls on governments, international institutions, and civil society to recognize that China’s atrocities against Uyghurs are continuing in new forms and to take urgent action to hold the Chinese government accountable. Silence and inaction only enable the continuation of these crimes against humanity and acts of genocide.