Fear of internment drives Uyghur out-migration and is itself a state weapon

Evidence

The threat of internment is a fear that hovers over Xinjiang like a black cloud and looms heavy in the mind of every Uyghur Muslim. So heavy, that for thousands of Uyghurs like Zeinab, the only relief is refuge in a foreign land. This fear is a weapon that the Chinese government has wielded to deter and intimidate Uyghurs from exercising their faith, enforced by way of a ubiquitous police presence in Uyghur Muslim communities, by tapping neighbors, classmates, and colleagues of targeted subjects as informants and spies, and perhaps most nefariously, by recruiting Uyghur children to monitor and implicate their own parents as “terrorists.” — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 624

Categorization

• SEED: The idea that anticipatory fear of detention — not detention itself — functions as the primary behavioral-control weapon could anchor an essay comparing deterrent-by-fear strategies across states.