CFU PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 25th, 2026, 11:00 AM EST
Contact: contact@campaignforuyghurs.org
https://campaignforuyghurs.org/
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) highlights new research by Dr. Adrian Zenz detailing the investigative method that helped uncover some of the Chinese Communist Party’s most secretive policies targeting Uyghurs in East Turkistan (AKA Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region).
Published in Qualitative Research, the study, “Investigative Policy Analysis: Leveraging ethnography’s postures to research secretive state policies in access-restricted authoritarian contexts,” introduces a methodology, the Investigative Policy Analysis (IPA), developed by Dr. Zenz in 2018 as he uncovered the CCP’s policies in East Turkistan.
With independent access to the region severely restricted, IPA provides a way to reconstruct hidden state policies by piecing together evidence from Chinese government documents, procurement records, government terminology, local reports, witness accounts, and treats digital spaces as forensic repositories. Rather than examining abuses in isolation, this approach connects pieces to identify the broader policies and government structures behind them.
Dr. Zenz’s study details how seemingly routine government records provided critical evidence. Procurement documents for detention facilities, for example, included specifications for high perimeter walls, watchtowers, barbed wire, and surveillance systems. Other investigations combined witness testimony with government policies and local records to document the placement of Uyghur children into state-run boarding and childcare facilities after their parents were detained.
“The CCP has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the world from seeing the full extent of its persecution of the Uyghur people, but the scale of the crimes is so large that it continues to leave evidence behind,” said CFU Executive Director Rushan Abbas. “For families like mine, with my sister Gulshan still unjustly imprisoned, the documentation matters. Dr. Zenz’s research has shown the world what the Chinese government has tried to conceal, giving policymakers, journalists, and the public evidence that cannot simply be dismissed or erased.”
As the CCP continues to restrict independent access to East Turkistan and control information about its policies, rigorous documentation remains essential to understanding the scope and structure of the ongoing Uyghur genocide.
CFU calls on governments, academic institutions, journalists, researchers, and human rights organizations to support independent research and work to preserve evidence of the CCP’s persecution of Uyghurs. Efforts to restrict access and erase evidence must not be allowed to shield the Chinese government from accountability.