Keyword Xinjiang China

A relentless chronicle of the tragedy of the Uighurs, an ethnic minority of some eleven million people who live in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, speak a Turkic language and practice the Muslim religion. The Uighurs suffer brutal cultural and political oppression by Xin Jinping's tyrannical government: torture, disappearances, forced labor, re-education of children and adults, mass sterilizations, extensive surveillance and destruction of historical heritage.

Under the pretext of fighting terrorism or crime, the major powers have embarked on a dangerous race for surveillance technologies. Facial recognition cameras, emotion detectors, citizen rating systems, autonomous drones… A security obsession that in some countries is giving rise to a new form of political regime: numerical totalitarianism. Orwell's nightmare.

Yimin, the son of a carriage driver of Xinjiang ethnicity, is in love with Malihan. Malihan's father despises Yimin for his lowly background and forces his daughter to marry Bulate. Min then leaves town for development for 5 years and comes back as an army officer. However, Han has been forced to engage with Te. With Han defying the arrangement, Te challenges Min to a duel. Min catches the bullet meant for Te and wins him and Han's father to his side. But when war beckons, he sacrifices love to join the army. After the war, Min goes back to his hometown but everything has changed. Han and her whole family have gone without a trace. Min can only recall the past alone.

In 1994, the oil-rich city of Karamay in Northwest China was the site of a horrible fire that killed nearly 300 schoolchildren. The students were performing for state officials and were told to stand by while the officials exited first. After the fire, the story was heavily censored in the Chinese state media. To this day, the families of Karamay have not been allowed to publicly mourn their children.

A report on the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China.