While hiking with my boyfriend and dog I was waiting outside a supermarket one day while he was shopping. A woman and her daughter came to give us some dogtreats and a bag of sweet buns because they thought I was homeless. I couldn’t do anything but gracefully accept. We did enjoy the sweet buns and a few days later we spotted a woman with her daughter begging at the train station and were able to pass on the kindness. We are also always on the lookout for beggars with dogs to share out some treats. All in all it caused more goodness (and only slight embarresment) in our lives.

From the report: This report is a product of field and remote research carried out between October 2019 and May 2021. The report’s findings and conclusions are based on first-hand testimonies that Amnesty International gathered from former detainees of the internment camps and other people who were present in Xinjiang after 2017, as well as from an analysis of satellite imagery and data. The report also draws on testimonial evidence and confidential government documents gathered and analysed by journalists, scholars, and other human rights organizations. One hundred twenty-eight people were interviewed for this report: 55 former detainees of internment camps in Xinjiang (39 men and 16 women), 15 other witnesses who lived in or visited Xinjiang since 2017, and 68 family members of people from Xinjiang who are currently missing or detained. The majority of the interviewees were Kazakh, a minority were Uyghurs, and a small number were Kyrgyz or Han Chinese.