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Tahir Hamut Izgil, trans. by Joshua L. Freeman
Rave The Financial Times (UK) \"He deserves to be read and listened to widely .. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/82a0ff46-2514-408e-9810-de0175e7853d The most fascinating parts of the book deal with the lesser-known periods of Xinjiang’s history, the decade that led up to the mass detention campaigns, when religious freedoms were gradually being eroded. It provides a lesson in how crackdowns gather momentum and, in particular, how omnipresent surveillance speeds up minoritised groups’ internalization of their oppression ... Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/82a0ff46-2514-408e-9810-de0175e7853d This is a beautiful read. Izgil’s poetic gaze, and the elegant translation by Joshua L Freeman, together produce a compact, compelling prose that pushes you to keep reading on, even as you blink back tears.\
James Griffiths
Positive The Financial Times Those concerned about digital rights in the west would do well to heed Griffiths’ warnings that China’s system of internet censorship is not for internal consumption only but is being exported as part of a campaign by Beijing to legitimise its approach to the world ... Griffiths explains a technical subject — Beijing’s internet controls — through the lens of Chinese politics and the logic of social movements. Chapters on tech companies and regulation are interleaved with deeply moving stories of the accidental activists who became the victims of China’s censors: Falun Gong mystics, satirical cartoonists and Uighur Muslims, among many ... In a slightly rushed epilogue, Griffiths concludes that the capitalists of \'Silicon Valley won’t save you\', but nor can western governments (sometimes hypocritically) propounding the virtues of a free internet abroad, given the suspicion that governments such as China’s attach to anything the US defends.