原版文章由Joanne Smith Finley撰写，于2018年12月28日在《中参馆》上发表。中文版于匿名者翻译。
如今在中国西部边境的一个古老的丝绸之路绿洲小镇，口渴的旅行者可以在当地的清真寺里倒一杯冰镇啤酒，从前的礼拜场所现在是游客的酒吧。或许是客人的想法，又或许是中国领导人的主意，这个地方被称为“喀什梦想”。
In an old Silk Road oasis town on China’s western border, these days a thirsty traveller can knock back a cold beer in a local mosque. The former place of worship is now a bar for tourists. And it is with the customers’ views in mind—and, perhaps, the aspirations of China’s leaders—that the place is called “The Dream of Kashgar.”
然而，对于喀什噶尔的维吾尔族居民以及新疆中国地区的其他穆斯林来说，这个梦想是一场噩梦。为了研究身份和宗教，我已经在维吾尔族社区待了27年，在我去年夏天前往新疆时，我目睹了这27年里最恐怖的恐惧和创伤。清真寺被摧毁，并且被剃刀线封住，餐馆被剥夺了清真标志，当地人小心翼翼地避免任何虔诚的宗教表达。
For Kashgar’s Uighur residents, however, and for other Muslims across the Chinese region of Xinjiang, that dream is a nightmare. Last summer, when I traveled to Xinjiang, I witnessed the most abject sense of fear and trauma I have encountered in 27 years of researching identity and religion among its Uighur communities. Mosques were deserted and cloaked in razor wire, restaurants were stripped of their halal signage, and local people carefully avoided any expression of religious piety.
当我在6月的最后一周抵达新疆的主要省会乌鲁木齐时，外国媒体已经对由中国领导人长期严厉控制的宗教和文化压制运动进行了大量的报道。除了一系列针对基本宗教活动，维吾尔语言教育和文化表达的禁令之外，新疆当局现在以打击极端宗教的名义拘留了一百万名当地人，并委婉地将此类拘留所称之为“教育改革中心”。虽然新疆长期以来是一个有争议的领土，但自2009年至2015年间一系列种族间暴力事件的发生，中国政府对该地区的控制也一直在加强，包括前所未有地对日常生活的监察和政府干预。
By the time I arrived in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi in the last week of June, foreign media reports were already widely circulating of a particularly heavy-handed campaign of religious and cultural repression in the region, which Chinese leaders have long sought to control. On top of an escalating series of bans on basic religious practice, Uighur language education, and cultural expression, authorities in Xinjiang were now detaining a million local people in detention camps they euphemistically called “transformation through education centers” in the name of combating religious “extremification.” Xinjiang has long been a contested territory, but the most recent wave of Chinese government efforts to control the region, which has gathered force since a spate of interethnic violence between 2009 and 2015, also involves unprecedented levels of surveillance and government intrusion into daily life.
在几个月连续断然否认新疆穆斯林维吾尔族和哈萨克人的拘留营存在之后，中国共产党（C.C.P.）最近改变了策略，开始尝试去让拘留营变得合法化。与此同时，它发起了针对国内外批评者的大规模反宣传活动，赞扬其在新疆的反清真运动，并推出了曾经宣称俘虏收容所让维吾尔族人民意识到“生活可以如此丰富多彩”的自治区政府主席兼党委副书记雪克来提·扎克尔（地方党委书记陈全国二号）。
After months of flatly denying that the existence of its detention camps for Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs in Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) recently changed course, moving to legalize the camps. At the same time, it launched a massive counter-propaganda effort against domestic and foreign critics, lauding its anti-halal campaign in Xinjiang, and wheeling out Shohrat Zakir, Chairman and Deputy Party Chief (number two to regional Party Secretary Chen Quanguo) of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, who announced that the internment camps have made Uighurs realize “that life can be so colorful.”
10月9日，一个新疆官方媒体网站天山发布的一篇中文文章向我们展示了中国政府修改后的立场。它坚持认为新疆政策的批评者弄错了，并配以一张描绘了戏剧性的天空和喜欢小麦蒲式耳的农民的文化大革命风格图片作以说明。据这位匿名作者称，“自发思想解放运动”现在正在“清洗”新疆，“掠过大草原”，让群众“把流氓宗教极端分子扔进历史的坟墓”。它声称新疆社会各界欢迎这场运动。女人们已经脱掉了头巾。儿童已经从地下古兰经学校的宗教灌输的“阴郁”中解救出来。老一辈的人为他们的后代从“伤害他人的绿色道路”返回而欣喜。在从前，与汉族的通婚，是维吾尔族长期的社会禁忌，但年轻人“打破了极端主义思想的束缚”，为信仰不再变成自由恋爱的障碍感到高兴。所有人都声称“夺回了生命中最基本的权利”，且“仍然掌握着中世纪的经文”。尽管取得了这些成功，但作者抱怨说，西方国家的行为像“焦虑的泼妇在街头咒骂”或“不能安静坐着地激动的野驴”审视中国的政策，利用自由和人权等概念在新疆“惹事生非”。
A Chinese-language article first posted on Tianshan, an official state media site in Xinjiang, on October 9 tells us much about the Chinese government’s revised position. Illustrated by Cultural Revolution-style images of dramatic skies and beaming farmers holding bushels of wheat, it insists that critics of its Xinjiang policies have got it wrong. According to the anonymous author, a “spontaneous thought liberation movement” is now “cleansing” Xinjiang, “blazing across the prairie,” and enabling the masses to “throw rogue religious extremists into the grave of history.” All sectors of Xinjiang society, it claims, have welcomed this campaign. Women have thrown off their headscarves. Children have been rescued from the “gloom” of religious indoctrination in underground Quranic schools. Elders rejoice as their offspring are snatched back from “the green road of harming others”—for this, read Islamic revival, which in Xinjiang had been largely peaceful until the state cracked down on it. And the youth have “broken the chains of extremist thought,” delighted that faith no longer constitutes an obstacle to free love—here, read intermarriage between Uighurs and Han Chinese, long a social taboo in Uighur communities. All are allegedly “taking back the most basic rights in life” from those “still holding the medieval scriptures.” Despite these successes, the author complains, Western countries are behaving “like anxious shrews, cursing in the streets” or “agitated wild donkeys who can’t sit still,” scrutinizing China’s policies and using concepts like freedom and human rights to “stir up trouble” in Xinjiang.
然而，这些描述并不符合我今年夏天看到和听到的任何内容。
None of these descriptions reflect anything I saw and heard this summer.
我开始观察这场“人民战争恐怖行动”，当然，中国政府称之为维吾尔族人日常宗教活动“去极端化”运动。始于20世纪90年代，新疆一直在进行当地的伊斯兰复兴。2009年乌鲁木齐骚乱使国家加剧对新疆宗教和文化的控制，加速了复兴。然而，政府努力平息它所认为的分裂主义威胁只会让维吾尔人感到更加分离，似乎使他们在外表方面和日常宗教活动中看起来更加虔诚，这使当局非常震惊。以下是我行走在乌鲁木齐所观察到的。
I had come to observe the impacts of the “People’s War on Terror”—which is the Chinese government’s name for what it also calls a campaign of “de-extremification”—on Uighurs’ everyday religious practices. Until the past few years, a local Islamic revival had been underway in Xinjiang. It began in the 1990s, and increasing state controls on religion and culture in the wake of the 2009 Urumqi riots had accelerated it. Paradoxically, the government’s efforts to quell what it perceived as the threat of separatism had only made Uighurs feel more separate, and seemed to make them more pious in both appearance and everyday religious practice, which in turn only alarmed the authorities more. Here is what I saw as I walked around the city of Urumqi.
在乌鲁木齐的第一天，我参观了Khantängri清真寺。铁质屏障阻挡着入口，剃刀线缠满了边界的围栏，已经被遗弃的前院依然竖立着中华人民共和国国旗（P.R.C.），角落里有一台数码电视机在播放着反极端主义口号。我问来自维吾尔族的礼拜场所的中年保安，他告诉我，“退休男子对进入清真寺很谨慎，因为如果他们这样做，他们的退休福利就会被停止。政府雇员不允许进去，过去常常进去的商人也开始感到害怕，因为他们都还需要赚钱。”
On my first day in Urumqi, I visited Khantängri mosque. The large forecourt was deserted, apart from the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) flag, erected since my last visit in 2016, and a TV screen in the corner running digital anti-extremist slogans. A heavy iron barrier obstructed the entrance, while razor wire coiled in rings over the boundary fences. I asked the middle-aged Uighur security guard who manned the door where the worshippers were. “Retired men are wary of going in the mosque because they’ll have their retirement benefits stopped if they do,” he told me. “Government employees can’t go in because they need to earn money, and the businessmen who used to go in are now too scared.”
一个无意中听到我的询问的人，默默地带我去了一个安静小巷的拐角处，进一步解释了这个“问题”，“我们都想去清真寺！但如果我们这样做，他们会检查我们的身份证，还会把我们带进监狱。”
Another man who overheard my enquiries silently beckoned me around the corner into a quiet alleyway, then explained about the “problem,” uttering this word in English. “We all want to go in the mosque! But if we do, they will take us to prison. They check our identity cards.”
在接下来的三个星期，我访问的12座清真寺，它们远远不仅仅是摆脱了“极端主义影响”，这里根本没有任何人类存在。除了无处不在的中国共产党旗帜之外，一切都被剃刀线包围，入口由保安人员监控，奇怪的是，他们的任务是对敢于进入的人进行身份证检查和虹膜识别扫描。
Far from being freed from “extremist influence,” the 12 mosques I visited over the next three weeks lacked any human presence at all. Eerily empty—apart from the ubiquitous P.R.C. flag—all were covered in razor wire, and entrances were monitored by security guards whose task it was to check ID cards and conduct iris recognition scans on anyone who dared enter.
许多清真寺已被部分地或全部地去圣化。乌鲁木齐的外国居民描述在春天的某一天看到吊车在城市里的清真寺里移走明月，然后又看见这个新月在九或十天后被放回。这个转变可能反映了当地执政党内部斗争对外国旅行者的考虑。
Many mosques had been partially or wholly de-sanctified. Foreign residents of Urumqi described seeing cranes removing crescents from city mosques one day in the spring, then watching as crescents were put back nine or 10 days later, a development that likely reflected local Party in-fighting as political zeal contended with pragmatic concerns around foreign tourism.
在拆迁又翻新后的喀什“老城区”里，清真寺空无一人，他们华丽的门被锁住，并被剃刀线围起来。居民证实这些门已经被永久关闭了一年多。 一些清真寺的墙上贴着2017年3月29日出台的“禁止灭绝条例”或是2016年5月3日的出台的“关于改善民族团结的工作条款”。
In the demolished-then-refurbished Kashgar “Old Town,” neighborhood mosques were empty, their ornate doors padlocked, their boundaries decked in razor wire. Residents confirmed that the doors had been permanently closed for over a year. Some mosque walls sported framed copies of the “Regulations on De-extremification” adopted on March 29, 2017, or the “Clauses on Work to Improve Ethnic Unity” of May 3, 2016.
而其他的一些清真寺的新月已被移除。当我问一位30多岁的当地维吾尔族妇女，为什么某一个新月会消失，她说它是被移走的。在另外一个地方，当我问到一名中年维吾尔族男子在该州是否已移走新月时，他默默地点头点头，出于对普遍的闭路监控系统的考虑，他拒绝大声说出来。他甚至否认他曾经进入过清真寺，即使过去被允许这样做。
Other neighborhood mosques had had their crescents removed. When I asked one local Uighur woman in her 30s what had happened to a missing crescent, she said it had been taken away. Elsewhere, a middle-aged Uighur man nodded in silent affirmation when asked whether the state had removed a crescent. But he declined to say so out loud, mindful of the watchful eyes and ears of the pervasive closed-circuit monitoring system. Such was his anxiety that he denied he had ever entered the mosque, even when permitted to do so.
在喀什老城的另一个街区，一名头戴小白色帽的回族老人（回族，也被称为“中国穆斯林”，是阿拉伯商人和士兵的后裔，当伊斯兰教扩张到东方时抵达中国）和他的维吾尔族妻子很不高兴地告诉我，他们的清真寺关闭了一段时间，而对面的古兰经学校关闭了更长时间。他说，“最近一些来自国外的穆斯林想去清真寺祈祷，我们不得不告诉他们去Heytgah清真寺。”他的妻子询问我的职业，我说我是一名大学讲师。 “那么，你知道情况了吗？”她问道，然后安静地流下眼泪。我安慰她，摇晃她的手臂，说事情会变得更好。 “什么时候，”她问，“他们会变得更好吗？”
In another neighborhood of the Kashgar Old Town, an elderly Hui man in a white skull cap (the Hui, also known as “Chinese Muslims,” are descendants of Arab traders and soldiers who arrived in China as Islam expanded East) and his Uighur wife told me their mosque had been closed for some time, and the Quranic school that stood opposite it had been closed for even longer. Both were clearly upset. He said that recently some foreign Muslims had wanted to enter the mosque to pray, then turned to his wife and said, “We had to tell them to go to the Heytgah mosque, didn’t we?” His wife asked what I do, and I said I was a university lecturer. “So, you know about the situation, then?” she asked, before dissolving into quiet tears. I comforted her, squeezing her arm, and saying things would get better. “When,” she asked, “will they get better?”
从前，喀什噶尔著名的Heytgah清真寺（也称为Id Kah清真寺）每周五都有超过10，000名虔诚的人前来祈祷，在这里的入口处，我受到由两名带防暴盾牌的汉族防暴警察看护的维吾尔族售票员欢迎，并向我收取45元人民币，约合6.50美元。曾经装饰门楣的阿拉伯文字问候被扯掉了，取而代之的是宣传口号“爱党，爱国”。这些标语曾经是：“爱国，爱宗教“。在现在，宗教甚至不能作为一个次等的民众效忠。（popular allegiance？）
At the entrance of Kashgar’s famous Heytgah Mosque (also known as Id Kah Mosque), which formerly overflowed with more than 10,000 of the pious every Friday, I was greeted by a Uighur ticket seller, who charged me 45 renminbi, or about U.S.$6.50, for entry; two Han Chinese riot police with riot shields accompanied her. The Arabic-script greeting that once adorned the door lintel had evidently been ripped off, replaced by a propaganda slogan reading “Love the [Chinese Communist] Party, Love the Country.” Such signs had once read: “Love the Country, Love Religion.” Now, religion was denied even a secondary level of popular allegiance.
当我对游客可以进入清真寺表示惊讶，并询问当地人什么时候可以进入清真寺祷告时，警察立即威胁似地来问询我的个人情况。
When I expressed surprise that tourists were admitted and asked when local people were allowed in to pray, the police became immediately threatening, demanding to know my business.
清真寺的内部没有任何祈祷者，它像一个幽灵般的博物馆或历史遗址。在离祈祷大厅很远的地方，我找到了一个横幅：“民族团结就是幸福; 民族分裂主义和暴动是灾难。”一名没有戴着头巾的，穿着传统刺绣衬衫的年轻维吾尔男子, 恭敬地带领着一群汉族游客。当我质疑非信徒进入祈祷大厅是否得体时，他摇了摇头，回答说：“这只是我的工作，我不知道那个。”
Inside, the mosque felt like a ghostly museum or historical site. There were no worshippers. Before the far prayer hall, I found a banner reading: “Ethnic unity is happiness; Splittism [ethnic separatism] and riot are calamity.” A young Uighur man in a traditional embroidered shirt—but with his head uncovered—deferentially ushered a group of Han Chinese tourists inside. When I questioned the propriety of non-believers entering the prayer hall, he shook his head, and replied, “This is just my job. I wouldn’t know about that.”
当我走开的时候，那个年轻人拿出手机告诉门口的警察，这有一个潜在的麻烦制造者。不久之后，当我走向一位在寺内为植物浇水的年长维吾尔族男子时，他自行离开，当我向他打招呼时，他坚定地摇了摇头。几秒钟之后，一名警察出现在大约离25英尺的距离徘徊着，直到我离开。
As I walked away, the young man got out his phone, and apparently informed the door police there was a potential troublemaker at large, likely to cover his own back. Shortly afterwards, when I approached an older Uighur man watering the plants in the mosque courtyard, he systematically moved away, foot by foot, until finally giving me a firm shake of his head when I said hello. Seconds later, a police officer appeared at about a 25-foot distance and hung around until I moved away.
这些行为都没有表现出伊斯兰教“极端主义”“正常化”;相反，它证明旨在消除伊斯兰日常实践表达的大规模强迫性世俗化和蓄意的国家恐怖活动。无论多么和平，维吾尔族人都害怕被视为笃信宗教的人。
None of this suggested the “normalization” of “extremist” Islam; rather, it evidenced wholesale coercive secularization and a deliberate campaign of state terror—an intention to eliminate all expression of everyday Islamic practice, however peaceful, and a rising fear in Uighur communities of being seen as religious.
强制性世俗化和侵入式国家管控也反映到了宗教服装和维吾尔族人的身体。他们不再戴上面纱和头巾，女性上衣长度较短，男性没有面部毛发。早在2004年，随着伊斯兰复兴的加快，在乌鲁木齐的维吾尔族地区，女性，甚至年轻女孩都普遍配戴着面纱或头巾。
The imprint of coercive secularization was also visible on Uighur bodies through intrusive state controls on religious dress, resulting in a lack of veils and headscarves, and shorter tunic length on women, as well as in an absence of facial hair on men. Back in 2004, as the Islamic revival gathered pace, it had been common to see women, and even young girls, wearing the niqab or hijab in the Uighur district of Urumqi.
为了跟上全球女性穆斯林服饰裁剪趋势，自2016年起，乌鲁木齐许多年轻女性戴上了改良版的头巾。但当时南部的局势已经恶化。从喀什逃往该地区首府的维吾尔族移民告诉我，“南方许多人因为非常小的事情被关进监狱，比如戴着面纱和留着胡须。”在今年夏天的乌鲁木齐，除了最轻薄的雪纺头巾，很难再见到其它的了，而在喀什，甚至连头巾也毫无踪迹。同样的，从前维吾尔族男子至少都留着小胡子，如今除了老人外，其他所人都奇怪地剃掉了。
As recently as 2016, many young women in Urumqi had donned a turban-style head-covering or a modified version of the hijab, in a nod to global sartorial trends for Muslim women. But the situation was then already worsening in the south. Uighur migrants who had fled to the regional capital from Kashgar told me, “a lot of people down south have been put in prison for very small things, like wearing veils and growing beards.” By this summer, it was rare to see anything but the flimsiest chiffon headscarf in Urumqi, while in Kashgar head coverings were not in evidence at all. Similarly, where Uighur men had earlier worn beards or at least a moustache, all but the elderly were now strangely clean-shaven.
我在喀什遇见的一名德国学生从新疆北部的Ghulja写信给我，讲述了与维吾尔出租车司机的一次谈话。当她告诉他新疆清真寺目前情况非常糟糕时，他开始哭泣，并制作了一张留着小胡子的老照片。他告诉她，虽然留胡子没有被正式禁止，但每个人都知道这样做的严重后果，他也不再觉得自己能长出这样的胡子了。
A German student I had met in Kashgar wrote to me from Ghulja in north Xinjiang to recount a conversation held with a Uighur taxi driver. She said she told him that the mosque situation in Xinjiang was very sad. At this, he began to cry, producing an old photo of himself with a moustache. He told her he did not feel he could grow one anymore; that while the practice was not officially forbidden, everyone knew the heavy consequences of doing so.
在7月的社交媒体和和C.C.P的在线新闻报道中，有图片显示干部通过在街上剪短维吾尔女装，强制执行世俗着装。照片中的女性看起来很羞辱，有些人试图在镜头前遮住脸。
Images emerged in July, first on social media, then in online news reports, of C.C.P. cadres enforcing secular dress codes by cutting short Uighur women’s dresses in the street. The women in the photographs look humiliated, with some attempting to cover their face before the camera.
在乌鲁木齐，我采访许多由穆斯林餐饮企业雇用的女性。她们正在通过系统地删除清真标志来开展协调运动，对店面“去极端化”。在这里，除了维吾尔族和哈萨克族以外，回族穆斯林也会受到影响。当被问及她对天山区正在进行的城市“美化”项目的感受时，一位女性回族餐馆老板在仔细观察后说道：“我们的清真标志将不会被新的店面取代; 即使它没有出现在那里，我仍然会把它放在心里。”
In Urumqi, I spoke to many women employed by Muslim catering businesses, where a concerted campaign was underway to “de-extremify” shop-fronts through the systematic removal of halal signage. Here, not only Uighur and Kazakh but also Hui Muslims were affected. Asked how she felt about the ongoing urban “beautification” project in the city’s Tianshan district, a female Hui restaurateur observed carefully: “Our halal sign will not be replaced when the shop gets its new façade; but even if it doesn’t appear up there, I will still have it in my heart.”
在这种环境下，许多维吾尔族业主在开设新餐馆时选择了自我审查。有人告诉我：“我们没有在设计方案中加入清真标志，但每个人都知道这是家民族餐厅。”
In this environment, many Uighur owners had chosen to self-censor when they opened a new restaurant. One told me: “We did not put halal signage in the design plan, but everyone still knows the restaurant is an ethnic restaurant,” and therefore halal.
另外一些女性对该地政府对伊斯兰节日和习俗的攻击感到遗憾。一位在乌鲁木齐商店工作的维吾尔族年轻女子将我们带到一个远离闭路相机的安全角落，并说：“我们现在没有任何节日，没有人敢说Assalamu Alaykum（阿拉伯问候，表示着和平与你同在），因为这太宗教了。”
Other women lamented the state’s assault on Islamic festivals and customs. A young Uighur woman working in an Urumqi store removed us to a safe corner away from the ubiquitous closed-circuit cameras and said, “We don’t have any festivals now. No one even dares to say Assalamu Alaykum,” an Arabic greeting meaning peace be with you. “It’s too religious.”
她抱怨这个城市的国营新华书店现在没有为儿童准备的维吾尔文字的书籍。果然，我后来只在那里发现科一盒带有维吾尔语音标的卡片。与此同时，乌鲁木齐第一小学已经被剃刀线封锁，在学校外墙上贴着的劝告中国和维吾尔族儿童尊重他们的老师并“提高他们的个人素质”的海报中，维吾尔文字已被删除。上一次修正后的阿拉伯文字在新疆被禁止是在文化大革命期间。
She complained of how the city’s state-run Xinhua bookstore now carries no books teaching the Uighur script, which is a modified version of the Arabic script, to children. Sure enough, I later found only one box of flashcards with Uighur phonetics on sale there. Meanwhile, outside the barricaded and razor-wired Urumqi No. 1 primary school, the Uighur script had been removed from a poster exhorting Chinese and Uighur children to respect their teachers and “improve their personal quality.” The last time that the modified Arabic script had been banned in Xinjiang was during the Cultural Revolution.
维吾尔族儿童对天山博客中被描述为“土地清理”的“思想解放”的反应如何？在和我聊过的大多数这个年纪的孩子都不会忘记他们成长的政治环境。那些被受到惊吓的父母为了保护他们的孩子，让孩子们从关于维吾尔语言和宗教的讨论中隔离开，因为如果这些内容被孩子吸收和应用，有朝一日可能会看到他们被称为极端分子。
And what of the reactions of Uighur children to the “thought liberation” described as “cleansing the land” in the Tianshan blog post? At this age, most I spoke to remain oblivious to the politically charged environment in which they are growing up, not least because their frightened parents shield their ears from discussions of Uighur language and religion that, if absorbed and adopted, could one day see them branded as extremists.
在喀什，我遇到了一个六岁的维吾尔族男孩，他和所有维吾尔族儿童一样，被要求用普通话而不是母语维吾尔语去接受他的大部分学校课程。他自愿用完美的中文为我演唱中国的民族歌曲，然后使用白色粘性便签在他脸上贴出了一个已经消失的维吾尔文化日常——胡须。不知不觉中，这个脆弱的年轻灵魂在两个相互竞争的世界观之间被拉扯。
In Kashgar, I met a six-year-old Uighur boy, who, like all Uighur children, is now required to take most of his school classes in Mandarin Chinese rather than in Uighur, his mother tongue. Having volunteered to sing China’s national song for me in perfect Chinese, he then proceeded to recreate on his face a vanished Uighur cultural norm—the beard—using white sticky labels. Here was a vulnerable young soul pulled, unknowingly, between two contrastive and competing worldviews.
那些在难民营中的人怎么样了？10月中旬，Zakir声称由于“宗教极端主义思想”而被拘留的人，恢复并获得了新的职业技能，他们在回到社区后，为自己能用更多的收入支撑家庭而自豪。
And what really happens to those interned in the camps? Zakir claimed in mid-October that those held because of “religious extremist thought” are given vocational skills and rehabilitated, and they return to their communities, where they proudly support their families through an increased income.
我从一名新疆汉族居民那听到了类似言论，不过它有一个奥威尔式的扭曲。乌鲁木齐的一名汉族出租车司机解释说，“被拘留者只是在那里改变思想，然后他们会再出来。”
I heard similar rhetoric from Han Chinese residents of Xinjiang, albeit with an Orwellian twist. A Han taxi driver in Urumqi explained, “Detainees are just there to have their thinking changed; then they will come out again.”
然而，当地的维吾尔族人坚持认为，那些失踪的人并不是这样的。在喀什噶尔30多岁的一名女性专业人士证实，除了“那些生病的人。”会被释放，没有人从营地中出来过。在乌鲁木齐的另一个安静的谈话中，一位四十岁出头的维吾尔族商人解释说：“有些人需要用药物去改变他们的想法，这种药物也会使他们生病，但只有这样他们才能被释放。”
Local Uighurs, however, were adamant that the disappeared almost never make it out. A female professional in her 30s in Kashgar confirmed under her breath that next to no one is emerging from the camps, adding that the only ones released are “those who have fallen ill.” In another hushed conversation in Urumqi, a Uighur businessman in his early 40s explained, “Some people were given medicine to change their thinking, medicine for their minds, and it made them ill. Only then were they released.”
这些描述反映了中国政府目前对伊斯兰教的看法。在2017年由自由亚洲电台报道，并微信传播的官方C.C.P.音频录音中，维吾尔族被告知：“被选中接受再教育的公众人士已经感染了宗教极端主义和暴力恐怖主义意识形态，因此他们必须以病人的身份向医院寻求治疗。“”
These descriptions reflect the Chinese state’s current view of Islam as pathology. In an official C.C.P. audio recording, transmitted in 2017 via WeChat and reported by Radio Free Asia, Uighurs are told: “Members of the public who have been chosen for reeducation have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient.”
但是，国家想去治疗的不仅仅是宗教极端主义或者宗教。它针对的是更广泛的，带有政治抗争意识的群体，是整个维吾尔族甚至是穆斯林。
But what the state seeks to cure is not simply religious extremism, nor even religion. It is Uighur—or Muslim—identity more broadly, which it holds directly responsible for what it sees as continued political resistance.
2017年“解除极端主义条例”旨在打击宗教极端分子的“渗透”。然而，在拘留营中“再教育”的目的要大得多：根除对中国国家构成安全威胁的维吾尔族语言和伊斯兰教日常实践，使维吾尔族身份失去力量。
The 2017 “Regulations on De-extremification” purport to combat “penetration” by religious extremists. The aim of “reeducation” in the internment camps is, however, much bigger: to eradicate the Uighur language and Islamic practice, which are represented by the Chinese state as security threats, and castrate Uighur identity for good.
拘禁营和被失踪在他们身上的威胁不是“思想解放”，是关于恐吓，从而使维吾尔人持续处于恐惧状态。它们是汉族用于控制和统治的法令，是对弱小的侵略性入侵，以及对人格的暴力破坏。归根结底，它们旨在打破维吾尔族的意志。
The internment camps and the threat of being disappeared into them are not about “thought liberation.” They are about intimidation—keeping Uighurs in a state of fear. They are an enactment of Han Chinese control and dominance, an aggressive intrusion on the powerless, and a vioThe signs of the approaching nightmare were there back in 2016. New Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo had just transferred in from Tibet, and was expected to substantially deepen already draconian levels of securitization in Xinjiang.lent destabilisation of personhood. In the final analysis, they are intended to break the will of the Uighur nation.
接近噩梦的迹象是在2016年。新的新疆党委书记陈全国带着加深新疆已经严峻的证券化水平的期望从西藏转入。
The signs of the approaching nightmare were there back in 2016. New Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo had just transferred in from Tibet, and was expected to substantially deepen already draconian levels of securitization in Xinjiang.
在2016年访问期间最让人感到震惊的一件事是我与一位认识很长时间的朋友的互动，以下我会叫她A。我们首先在一家餐厅见面，然后再搬去她家。在我们不同场地的谈话中，A不断地，直截了当地说明新疆的国家政策有多么好。由于知道她以前所处的关键位置，我不禁想知道她的陈述是否真实。
Most striking during my visit in 2016 were my interactions with a longtime friend I will call A. We met first in a public restaurant, then moved to her home. Throughout our conversation in both venues, A baffled me by repeatedly declaring, straight-faced, how good state policies are in Xinjiang. Knowing her previously critical position, I could not help but wonder whether her statements were genuine.
在我下次见到她时，A的搭档驱车带我们离开乌鲁木齐。然后，A带着我走了一条荒凉的山路，远离城市的视听监控网络。 “我心里想说的很多，但我不能说任何一个，”A告诉我。 “好吧，我可以说，但没有人必须听到。如果[政府]的政策没有问题，那我为什么害怕说话呢？他们的政策是在没有事先协商的情况下形成的，然后在没有任何警告的情况下执行。”
The next time I saw her, A’s partner drove us out of Urumqi. Then, A walked me up a deserted mountain track, far from the city’s audio-visual surveillance network. “I have much in my heart I want to say, but I can’t say any of it,” A told me. “Well, I can say it, but no one must hear it. If the [government’s] policies are fine, then why am I afraid of speaking? Their policies are formed with no prior consultation, then implemented without any warning.”I felt compelled to read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four when I returned home. The parallels between that masterpiece and a Xinjiang now in the grip of “de-extremification” and “thought liberation” are astonishing. In the book’s final part, the protagonist’s government torturer reveals that the state does not “merely destroy our enemies, we change them. . . [So] long as [the heretic] resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. . . You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”
今年夏天是陈全国发起宗教“去极端化”运动的第二年，情况发生了巨大的转变。成千上万的维吾尔族和哈萨克斯坦穆斯林“失踪”，接着进入了拘留营。当局要求他们放弃伊斯兰教并宣誓效忠中国国家主席习近平。一名来自喀什的30多岁的维吾尔族老师说：“我们维吾尔族过去经常聊天，但现在我们不再谈了，我们害怕说错话。”
By this summer—the second year of Chen’s campaign of religious “de-extremification”—the situation had taken a serious turn for the worse. Hundreds of thousands of Uighur and Kazakh Muslims had been “disappeared” into extra-judicial internment camps where authorities ask them to renounce Islam and pledge allegiance to Chinese President Xi Jinping. And all but two of the contacts I had maintained for over two decades were too petrified to see me. As a Uighur teacher in her 30s from Kashgar put it, “We used to chat a lot, we Uighurs. But now we don’t talk any more. We are so afraid of saying the wrong thing.”
当我回到家时，我觉得有必要阅读乔治奥威尔的“一九八四”。这部杰作与现在处于“去极端化”和“思想解放”的新疆之间有着令人惊讶的相似之处。在这本书的最后一部分中，主角的政府折磨者揭示了国家并不“仅仅摧毁我们的敌人，我们改变他们。 。 。 所以只要异教徒抵抗我们，我们永远不会毁灭他，我们皈依他，我们抓住他的内心，重塑他。 。 。你会空洞的。我们会把你挤空，然后我们再把你自己填满。”
I felt compelled to read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four when I returned home. The parallels between that masterpiece and a Xinjiang now in the grip of “de-extremification” and “thought liberation” are astonishing. In the book’s final part, the protagonist’s government torturer reveals that the state does not “merely destroy our enemies, we change them. . . [So] long as [the heretic] resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. . . You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”