07/15/22_fpe_Edi HR_

One reason why the Chinese government was able to deny the human rights violations in Xinjiang for so long was that hardly any pictures from inside the forced labor camps disguised as „educational institutions“ made it to the outside world. A comic book that tells the story of Zumrat Dawut aims to fill the gap. The young mother was arrested in Urumqi in 2018 and spent two years in a camp where she was not only mistreated but also forcibly sterilized. The graphic novel reportage, „I Escaped A Chinese Internment Camp,“ won the Pulitzer Prize for „illustrated reporting“ in May. „Sometimes people have to see things to believe they’re actually happening,“ says Walter Hickey, who directed the project journalistically and spoke with China.Table about its creation and realization.