REVEALED: The Unprecedented Scale of China’s Mass Detention Program

THE BIG STORY

China Can Lock Up A Million Muslims In Xinjiang At Once

For the first time, we can reveal the scale of the prison and detention camps for Muslims China has built in the Xinjiang region: enough room to detain over one million people. We've found 347 compounds that were constructed or saw significant renovations since 2016, the year the campaign to lock up Muslims in Xinjiang started. Combined, those buildings cover more than 206 million square feet, the equivalent of a third of Manhattan.

We also obtained China's own prison construction standards, which lay out how much space is needed for each prisoner or detainee. Using that information, we found there's enough space to detain 1,014,883 people across Xinjiang, more than one in every 25 residents of the region.

China's Foreign Ministry did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story. It has previously called estimates of a million Muslims detained in Xinjiang a "groundless lie," and has said that its facilities in Xinjiang are designed to "root out extreme thoughts."

It's possible this number is an undercount. Dozens of former inmates have described overcrowding in the prisons and camps. Whether overcrowding continues is less clear, because most of the ex-detainees who have been able to escape China were locked up early in the campaign.

But our anlaysis reflects what researchers, UN officials, and Western governments have long held: that China's detention campaign in Xinjiang is the largest against a religious minority since the Nazi camps during World War II.

Read the previous installments of our Pulitzer Prize-winning Xinjiang series:

Part 1: China Secretly Built A Vast New Infrastructure To Imprison Muslims

Part 2: Ex-Prisoners Detail The Horrors Of China's Detention Camps

Part 3: Here's What A Xinjiang Detention Camp Looks Like From The Inside

Part 4: We Found The Factories Inside China's Mass Internment Camps

A wall painting reads "Stability is a blessing, instability is a calamity," in Yarkand, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China on September 20, 2012. Eric Lafforgue / Corbis via Getty Images

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

Jeff Bezos went to space for 19 seconds longer than the paid breaks his employees get at Whole Foods

Tied to a rocket ship shaped like nothing remotely conspicuous, billionaire Jeff Bezos shot himself up to the edge of space on Tuesday for 10 minutes and 19 seconds. Upon landing, he thanked "every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this." Just something for me, personally, to think about after buying salt on Amazon because the store "feels far today."

This was the first passenger flight for Blue Origin, Bezos's aerospace company. He didn't fly alone: with him was his brother Mark, 82-year-old aviation pilot Wally Funk, and a rich Dutch teen. The flight came a week after Richard Branson — who is also obscenely rich but has an accent, that's how you can tell them apart — also went to the edge of space.

A lot of men with disposable income and a threatening laugh are launching themselves to the moon, I see. I'd ask what they know that I don't but considering that yesterday in New York, I was coughing on wildfire smoke from the other side of the country, I think I have a handle on why they're investigating the rest of the universe. I've said this before but I suppose it stands being said again: Space is ass, and no one should go there. It wants us dead and it has the right to murder us at any time. We are guests, and yet we keep stomping around this borrowed house, making it so hot that all the oysters are dead, and trying to sneak into our host's attic to root around up there for things that do not belong to us. Stop being a brat, clean up after yourself, and don't expect the sun and the stars to save you now.

SNAPSHOTS

Tom Brady finally went back to the White House for the first time in 16 years. That's good. I'm glad. He really needed the win.

Halsey says she's done doing press after a magazine disrespected their pronouns and took quotes out of context. Halsey goes by she/her as well as they/them.

Britney Spears' new lawyer is "moving aggressively and expeditiously" to get her father out of her conservatorship. #FreeBritney.

Here are some jokes about Bezos's wiener ship. They're funny.

STOP DOING THIS

A couple has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after their gender reveal went awry

On Tuesday, Refugio Manuel Jimenez Jr. and Angela Renee Jimenez were charged for allegedly setting off a bomb for a gender reveal in 2020 that caused wildfire. The 23-day-long fire ended up burning more than 22,000 acres in Southern California and killed one firefighter.

Listen. Listen to me. Please cut this out. The gender of your little rat baby can't possibly be so important that a forest has to burn down in the name of your pregnancy. If people absolutely must learn about the gender of their incubating offspring, can't they do it the way my mother did: by getting the news from the doctor and then crying all the way home because you realize your youngest child will always make 25 cents less than your eldest son, forever. It's tradition!!!!!

ALMOST ENOUGH

Venmo is ending the public feed, but still needs one more privacy fix

Remember how, in May, BuzzFeed News found Joe Biden's secret Venmo through the (public!) Friends Lists? (You can read that story here.) Well, now Venmo has decided to get rid of the global view, which is the feed where you could see transactions between you and your friends, but also between total strangers. The update will roll out to all users in the next few weeks.

This still doesn't mean all your transactions are private. If you go to someone's account who isn't your friend, you can still see their public transactions. Your Friends List may still be available to the public too, which I found out last weekend while...hanging out with one of the reporters who broke the Venmo story last spring. That was humbling.

HA HA YIKES

Life expectancy has dropped more in 2020 than it has since World War II

COVID-19 has cut US life expectancy by a year and a half in 2020, which brings it down to 77.3 years. This drop was also driven by increases in overdose deaths, murders, as well as deaths from diabetes and alcohol-related liver disease. It's the worst drop since World War II. The Latinx population had the worst drop in life expectancy, down three years to 78.8 years, 90% of which was driven by the pandemic.

Nearly 3.6 million people died in the US last year. Around 375,000 were from COVID-19. If you haven't already, go get vaccinated.

SHORTS ARE FOR BOYS ONLY, APPARENTLY

Norway's women's handball team can't wear shorts while they play

While protesting the rules that require women to wear bikini bottoms, the Norwegian women's beach handball team was fined for wearing shorts to the European championships. The European Handball Federation gave out fines of 150 euros per person, totalling 1,500 euros, claiming the shorts were "improper clothing."

Men can wear shorts, because of course they can. Women, however, have to wear bikini bottoms that have "a close fit and cut on an upward angle toward the top of the leg." The side width of the bikini can be no more than 10 centimetres (or 3.9 inches for you imperial system stans). The specifics of this beg the question: Is a Female Bikini Inspector (FBI) actually a real job? God, I have so many strange men on the beach to apologize to.

At some point, you've disappointed someone you love and every day they tamp that memory down in order to maintain a relationship with you,

Scaachi

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