08/02/2026
Terör devleti Çin'nin Doğu Türkistan'da (Uyguriye) yaptığı sayısız nükleer tesleri Uygur Soykırımının Öbür yüzüdür.
*The nuclear imperialism-necropolitics nexus:*
*contextualizing Chinese*- *Uyghur* *oppression in our*
*nuclear age*
Becky Alexis-Martin
Geography and Environment, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
ABSTRACT
This paper provides a review of the People’s Republic of
China’s (PRC) nuclear warfare development and uranium
mining programs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region. Its scope spans from PRC’s first nuclear weapon test
in Lop Nur during the early Cold War, to the contemporary
issues surrounding in-situ leach uranium mining in the Yili
basin which now provides a third of PRC’s uranium. By explor-
ing these scenarios, it is possible to place a lens on the para-
meters and limitations to indigenous Uyghur life within
a nuclear state. This paper draws on the work of Achille
Mbembe’s necropolitics, whereby power is persistently exer-
cised as violence, to consider the entangled aftermath of
nuclear imperialism and its harmful consequences to Uyghur
bodies, environment and culture. While racialized nuclear
imperialism presented Uyghur lives as inconsequential to
industrial and military progress in Xinjiang, post-Cold War
necropolitics presents Uyghur culture as a direct threat to the
progress and values of the PRC sovereign state. This paper
proposes that the ongoing exploitation of nuclear Xinjiang
provides an additional motivation for state-imposed necropo-
litical sanctions upon Uyghur people. This paper also presents
a new theoretical contribution, the “nuclear imperialism-
necropolitics nexus”, which offers a way to consider the legacy
of injustice of spaces of nuclear activity, from nuclear imperi-
alism to the post-Cold War world.
This imbalanced
treatment only serves to strengthen tensions between the two communities.
In November 1985, Uyghur students in Beijing undertook peaceful protests
against the nuclear weapon tests (Dillon 200 � 2), � which extended across
Xinjiang’s universities and colleges. The Urumchi student protest took place
on 12 December 1985, as local universities also undertook peaceful protest.
This included action in Kashgar (Kashi), Aqsu (Akesu), Hotan (Hetian), and
Bortala (Bole), as approximately 15,000 students from different ethnic back-
grounds participated (Rozinisa 2019). These peaceful protests had clear aims.
Firstly, to promote democratic election in Xinjiang. Secondly, to stop the
nuclear weapon tests. The third main aim was to stop Xinjiang serving as
a large labor camp for China and to prevent unplanned immigration from
other parts of China. Other aims included the implementation of autonomous
law in Xinjiang, the elimination of one-child policy for Uyghur Muslims, and to
develop cultural education across the region (Rozinisa 2019). Mr Aziz Isa Elkun,
a nuclear test survivor from nearby Lop Nor who now lives in the UK, described
his priorities as follows “ . . . to stop the nuclear tests, to stop implementing
cultural genocide, to improve cultural education, and create equal rights with
Han people” (Elkun 2019). When we spoke, he described to me how he
produced a poster at high school as part of this peaceful movement, and
how he was incarcerated by police for “ . . . a few days”, after his role in activism
against PRC state was discovered. This small push-back against oppressive
policies had some serious long-term implications for him as an adult, as he
was later oppressed by state (Elkun 2019).
A serious incident occurred in 1989 when hundreds of Uyghur nationalists
stormed Xinjiang’s Great Hall of the People to demand greater political free-
dom and an end to nuclear weapon testing (Rodríguez 2013).
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/623657/1/REGE_A_1645611.pdf
