The Xinjiang Victims Database is a database which attempts to record all currently known individuals who are detained in Xinjiang internment camps in China. The database has documented over 16,000 victims. It was founded by Gene Bunin, who started the database in September 2018.
The database contains the names and biographical details of people who are thought to be detained in the camps. Many of the profiles also contain personal testimonies by the families and friends of the detainees.
Origin
Gene Bunin is a Russian-American linguistic researcher, who lived in Xinjiang until 2018, when Chinese police forced him to leave. He created the database to “have one place" to store detailed information of people interred in prison camps or disappeared after only "limited attempts" had been made to identify detainees.
Image sourcing controversy
On 6 January 2023, the Xinjiang Victims Database published a list of "over 2,000 Ürümqi police officers" along with a gallery of portraits. However, it was pointed out that images of two Xinjiang police officers listed in the database actually were of the Hong Kong celebrities Andy Lau Tak-wah and Chow Yun-fat. After it drew attention on social media and was mocked by Chinese state media, the Xinjiang Victims Database later responded stating that the data was sourced from "the file cache of a Urumqi database" obtained by the US news organization, The Intercept, which had included a photo of Andy Lau, and added that some of the photos of the police officers “aren’t always of themselves”.
↑"Xinjiang Documentation Project". Xinjiang Documentation Project. University of British Columbia. Retrieved 8 May 2021. Xinjiang Documentation Project, a joint effort between the Institute for Asian Research in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia and the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Department at Simon Fraser University,
