The New York Times International - 13.08.2019

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I NTERNATIONAL EDITION | TUESDAY,AUGUST 13, 2019

SURPRISE INSIDE

HIDDEN CHARMS

OF ‘EASTER EGGS’

PAGE 12| TECH

PRICE OF CHAOS

ITALY’S NONSTOP

ECONOMIC WOES

PAGE 7| BUSINESS

SAVING THE DRAGONS

PROTECTING KOMODOS

FROM OVERTOURISM

PAGE 4| WORLD

and what is legal and illegal,” he said.

In late July, the government said most

detainees had been released from the in-

doctrination camps built to eliminate

what it described as the threat of Islamic

radicalism and antigovernment senti-

ment among the overwhelmingly Mus-

lim population of Uighurs in the Xin-

jiang region in China’s northwest.

But reporters from The New York

The muscular young Uighur man sat un-

comfortably, glancing occasionally at

three Chinese officials in the room, as he

described his state-mandated salvation

in a re-education camp.

The man, Abduweili Kebayir, 25, ex-

plained how watching Islamic videos on

his phone landed him in one of China’s

notorious indoctrination camps for

Muslims for eight months — and how he

emerged in January as a reformed man.

“Now I know the error of my ways,” he

said, as his wife and daughter shuffled

nervously around the living room. The

room, like the rest of the eerily sparse

house where officials who arranged the

meeting said he lived, seemed almost

staged, decorated with a family portrait,

a potted plastic plant and a wall clock

that had stopped.

His words at times sounded as rigidly

scripted as the government’s propagan-

da.

“Now I know what is right and wrong,

Times found, over seven days of trav-

eling through the region, that the vast

network of detention camps erected by

the government of China’s authoritarian

leader, Xi Jinping, continues to operate

and even expand.

These camps, large and small, remain

swaddled in heavy security and secrecy,

despite the Chinese government’s new

pledge of transparency. There are five

major ones around Hotan, a city in

southern Xinjiang, including the one

where Mr. Kebayir said he was detained.

Recent satellite images showed that a

new detention facility has risen in the

desert across the road from his former

camp, surrounded by high walls and

telltale watchtowers.

Efforts by Times reporters to ap-

proach the camps, factories and reli-

gious sites were repeatedly blocked by

plainclothes security officials — often

giving outlandish explanations. Men

claiming to be construction workers

pulled power cables across the road

near the camp where Mr. Kebayir was

held and said it was too dangerous for

anyone to pass. (When the reporters

were later some distance away, the road

promptly reopened.)

Since last year, evidence has also

pointed to a system of forced labor

linked to the camps. Factories being

built nearby provide a place to transfer

detainees whom officials consider suffi-

ciently “reformed,” like Mr. Kebayir

now, while keeping them under govern-

ment supervision. Critics say this is sim-

ply another form of subjugation.

“I always thought the government

was backing itself into a corner with its

policies in Xinjiang,” said Sean R. Rob-

erts, a professor at George Washington

University who studies the region. “I

can’t imagine that the process of back-

C HINA, PAGE 4

A carpet store in Hotan, in the Xinjiang region of China. Five of China’s notorious indoctrination camps for Muslims have been found around the city.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GILLES SABRIÉ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

China retains Muslim camps

HOTAN, CHINA

Reporting undermines

claim that ‘re-education’

centers are winding down

BY CHRIS BUCKLEY

AND STEVEN LEE MYERS

Uighur schoolchildren. In late July, China said most detainees had been released from

the camps built to eliminate what it described as the threat of Islamic radicalism.

broader revival that could reshape the

world’s understanding of Salinger and

his writing, Little, Brown is publishing

digital editions of his four books, making

him perhaps the last 20th-century liter-

ary icon to surrender to the digital revo-

lution.

Then this fall, with Mr. Salinger’s help,

the New York Public Library will host

the first public exhibition from Salin-

ger’s personal archives, which will fea-

ture letters, family photographs and the

typescript for “The Catcher in the Rye”

with the author’s handwritten edits,

along with about 160 other items.

And before long, decades worth of Sal-

inger’s unpublished writing will be re-

leased, a project Mr. Salinger estimated

will take another five to seven years to

complete.

Combing through his father’s manu-

scripts and letters has been both en-

lightening and emotionally taxing, Mr.

Salinger said.

“It’s kept him very much alive for me,”

he said during an interview at the New

York Public Library. “It’s been fascinat-

ing and joyful and moving and sad.”

In the five decades since J.D. Salinger

published his final short story, “Hap-

worth 16, 1924,” his small, revered body

of work has stayed static, practically

suspended in amber.

Even as publishers and consumers

adopted e-books and digital audio, Salin-

ger’s books remained defiantly offline, a

consequence of the writer’s distaste for

computers and technology. And while

Salinger kept writing until his death

nearly 10 years ago, not a word has been

published since 1965.

That is partly because of his son, Matt

Salinger, who helps run the J.D. Salinger

Literary Trust and is a vigilant guardian

of his father’s legacy and privacy.

But now, in an effort to keep his fa-

ther’s books in front of a new generation

of readers, the younger Mr. Salinger is

beginning to ease up, gradually lifting a

cloud of secrecy that has obscured the

life and work of one of America’s most

influential and enigmatic writers.

This week, in the first step of a

It’s also put him in the awkward posi-

tion of becoming a de facto public face

for an author who detested publicity and

once told an interviewer that “publish-

ing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.”

“It’s weird, because I’ve spent my

whole life protecting him and not talking

about him,” Mr. Salinger said.

The question of what Salinger left be-

hind when he died in 2010 at the age of 91

remains one of the most tantalizing

mysteries in American literature. His

son has the answers but is not revealing

much for now, apart from the fact that

there is more writing — a lot of it — and

that he is preparing to release it.

He doesn’t want to inflate expecta-

tions for Salinger fans by describing the

contents, beyond confirming that his fa-

ther did continue to write about the

Glass family — the precocious cos-

mopolitans who feature in beloved

stories like “Franny and Zooey” and

“Seymour: An Introduction” — among

other subjects.

“He would want people to come to it

with no preconceptions,” Mr. Salinger

S ALINGER, PAGE 2

J.D. Salinger joins the digital revolution

The cloud of secrecy that has surrounded

J.D. Salinger is gradually being lifted.

LOTTE JACOBI/GADO IMAGES, VIA ALAMY

Reclusive author detested

the web, but his novels are

to be released as e-books

BY ALEXANDRA ALTER

The New York Times publishes opinion

from a wide range of perspectives in

hopes of promoting constructive debate

about consequential questions.

American intelligence officials are rac-

ing to understand a mysterious explo-

sion that released radiation off the coast

of northern Russia last week, appar-

ently during the test of a new type of nu-

clear-propelled cruise missile hailed by

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as

the centerpiece of Moscow’s arms race

with the United States.

United States officials have said noth-

ing publicly about the blast on Thursday,

possibly one of the worst nuclear acci-

dents in Russia since Chernobyl, al-

though apparently on a far smaller

scale, with at least seven people, includ-

ing scientists, confirmed dead. But the

Russian government’s slow and secre-

tive response has set off anxiety in

nearby cities and towns — and attracted

the attention of analysts in Washington

and Europe who believe the explosion

may offer a glimpse of technological

weaknesses in Russia’s new arms pro-

gram.

Thursday’s accident happened off-

shore of the Nenoksa Missile Test Site

and was followed by what nearby local

officials initially reported was a spike in

radiation in the atmosphere.

Late Sunday night, officials at a re-

search institute that had employed five

of the scientists who died confirmed for

the first time that a small nuclear reac-

tor had exploded during an experiment

in the White Sea, and that the authori-

ties were investigating the cause.

Vyacheslav Solovyev, the scientific di-

rector of the Russian Federal Nuclear

Center, said in a video interview with a

local newspaper that the institute had

been studying “small-scale sources of

energy with the use of fissile materials.”

But United States intelligence offi-

cials have said they suspect it involved a

prototype of what NATO calls the SSC-

X-9 Skyfall. That is a cruise missile that

Mr. Putin has boasted can reach any cor-

ner of the earth because it is partially

powered by a small nuclear reactor,

eliminating the usual distance limita-

tions of conventionally fueled missiles.

As envisioned by Mr. Putin, who

played animated video of the missile at a

state of the union speech in 2018, the

Skyfall is part of a new class of weapons

designed to evade American missile de-

fenses.

In several recent Pentagon and other

government reports, the prospect of a

Russian nuclear-powered cruise mis-

siles has been frequently cited as a po-

tential new kind of threat. They are

launched into the air and able to weave

an unpredictable path at relatively low

altitudes.

That makes them virtually unstop-

pable for the existing American antimis-

RUSSIA, PAGE 5

Explosion

offers view

of Russia’s

arms tests

Sudden radiation release

suggests accident involved

nuclear-powered missile

BY DAVID E. SANGER

AND ANDREW E. KRAMER

Each time a mass shooting strikes one

of our communities we grieve. We

gather our loved ones. We reach for

answers and clamor for action. Each

time, for a moment, it feels as if this time

will be different.

But then the news cycle rolls on. And

we push down the gut-churning knowl-

edge that it will be only a matter of time

before it happens again. Between El

Paso and Dayton only about 13 hours

elapsed.

Republican leaders try to prevent

action and parrot N.R.A. messaging —

as Donald Trump did last week when he

said, “Mental illness and hatred pulls

the trigger, not the gun.”

This is the same president who during

his first year in office repealed a rule

President Barack

Obama and I put in

place to help keep

guns out of the hands

of people with certain

mental illnesses. This

is the same president

who said after Char-

lottesville that there

were “very fine

people on both sides,” and who contin-

ues to fan the flames of hate and white

supremacy. We can’t trust his diagnosis.

We have a huge problem with guns.

Assault weapons — military-style fire-

arms designed to fire rapidly — are a

threat to our national security, and we

should treat them as such. Anyone who

pretends there’s nothing we can do is

lying — and holding that view should be

disqualifying for anyone seeking to lead

our country.

I know, because with Senator Dianne

Feinstein I led the effort to enact the

1994 law that banned assault weapons

and high-capacity magazines for 10

years. Those gun safety reforms made

our nation demonstrably more secure.

They were also, sadly, the last mean-

ingful gun legislation we were able get

signed into law before the N.R.A. and

the gun manufacturers put the Republi-

can Party in a headlock.

I fought hard to extend the assault

weapons and high-capacity magazines

bans in 2004. The Republicans who

allowed these laws to expire asserted

that they were ineffective. But, almost

15 years after the bans expired, with the

unfortunate benefit of hindsight, we

now know that they did make a differ-

ence.

Many police departments have re-

ported an increase in criminals using

assault weapons since 2004. And multi-

ple analyses of the data around mass

shootings provide evidence that, from

1994 to 2004, the years when assault

Time to ban

U.S. assault

weapons

Joe Biden

OPINION

Prohibiting

them works.

That’s why,

as president,

I would push

to do it again.

B IDEN, PAGE 11

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