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Photo by Nir Elias/Reuters

China's Disappeared Uyghurs: What Satellite Images Reveal

One million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, maybe more, have vanished into a sprawling network of camps and prisons in China's far west. Beijing initially denied that these camps existed and then later claimed they were empty.

But open-source satellite data reviewed by RAND researchers showed that most of these facilities appeared to be open and active. The images revealed bright-lit compounds, cars in parking lots, walkways plowed of snow, wall after wall of barbed wire, and a sudden rush to build what appear to be fortified preschools.

This imagery has provided a bird's-eye view of what's happening on the ground in the vast Uyghur homeland of Xinjiang, which Chinese officials have turned into one of the world's most sophisticated surveillance states.

“It's breathtaking how much satellite imagery is publicly available,” said RAND's Edmund Burke, who worked on the project. “You see stories about one particular camp, or hear one harrowing account from someone who got out of Xinjiang. We realized we could advance those stories and help provide a broader account of what is happening there.”