A practical workshop exploring the network of internment camps and prisons built across Xinjiang as part of the Chinese government’s campaign against Muslim minorities. Surveillance and heavy restrictions on journalists’ movement have made it difficult to research this issue – we’ll look at the techniques that our team used to find the camp network regardless. We’ll use Google Earth to analyse a small number of camps, developing skills in satellite imagery analysis and looking at the specific architectural and urban characteristics of a series of compounds. Format: introduction to the human rights crisis in Xinjiang and the research to find the camp network followed by a guided workshop session to analyse a series of internment camps.
To learn about what is happening in Xinjiang, the background to the current campaign against Muslim minorities in the region and about the camp system. We will also develop our skills in satellite imagery analysis through looking at a series of the camps.
We're hoping that many efforts and discussions will continue after Mozfest. Share any ideas you already have for how to continue the work from your session.:We want to raise awareness of what is happening in Xinjiang, in general, but also to bring it to policy makers who until now have often lacked good evidence about what is happening there. We would therefore like to make contacts with groups in national and international governmental organisations and researchers who can use our research in their work. We hope that researchers focusing on other regions or even those looking at Xinjiang will be able to learn from our techniques and replicate them.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session?:The satellite analysis section is the main part that will be affected by having a larger or smaller number of participants. With a very small group, we will be able to have a discussion about the different camp features that we can see in the imagery and be able to coach individual participants in their analysis, allowing them to really improve their skills. With a larger group, we would work with more of a quiz format - asking participants to find as much evidence as they can and then going through answers with the whole group.
Alison Killing is an architect who works on digital investigation and storytelling projects.