Eyes of the Machine

Should she ever see her husband and family again, she would ask them for forgiveness, says Kalbinur Sidik with sorrow in her eyes. The price she has paid for speaking the truth about China’s persecution of the Uyghurs in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) is immense. But she cannot remain silent. As a woman of Uzbek heritage who grew up in the Uyghur community, she has seen with her own eyes the methods used by the Chinese state to extirpate the Uyghur population.

Her recollections of dehumanizing internment camps are interwoven with monotonous state propaganda describing “training centers” where extremist ideas are “eradicated.” State control extends into the private realm too, through a program obligating families to host party members at home.

Three months after she managed to flee her country in 2019, her Uyghur husband, who had to stay behind, vanished without a trace. Despite the danger, Kalbinur sees it as her duty to bear witness to this ethnic cleansing. Combining her testimony with photographs, intercepted messages, and open-source data, Eyes of the Machine exposes the machinery of oppression.