Language as Target, Children as Victims: Inside China’s ‘Education’ Campaign in Xinjiang

Beijing calls it schooling. Uyghurs call it separation. In China’s Xinjiang region, state boarding schools have become instruments of systematic cultural erasure. Human Rights Watch documented that authorities separated countless children from families without parental consent. United Nations experts revealed that large-scale removal placed them in boarding schools where Mandarin is used almost exclusively. Researcher Adrian Zenz uncovered that in Uyghur-majority townships, government data shows over 400 minors have both parents in internment.

In June 2017, Xinjiang’s Hotan Prefecture Education Department issued a directive that completely banned the Uyghur language at all educational levels. The directive prohibited the use of the Uyghur language, writing, signs, and pictures in the educ