This is a virtual tour of a fictional pre-trial detention center (jail) in Xinjiang. Combining real elements from multiple known detention centers and years, it has been built on the basis of official construction standards, available blueprints, satellite imagery, photos and videos published in various local media, and multiple eyewitness accounts. Our goal is to provide you with a realistic immersive experience and let you bear witness to the practices and phenomena reported in these places. While the facility you are about to explore is largely representative of the pre-trial detention system in China in general, particular emphasis has been placed on the 2010-2020 period and on Xinjiang specifically, where these facilities have expanded five-fold during this decade. Because almost all inmates sentenced to prison are held in these facilities during the sentencing process, and because many of those sent to the region's concentration camps in the 2017-2019 period have passed through them as well, there is a very strong chance that any given detainee has been held in a facility like this. In total, they are likely to have held millions of people in Xinjiang at the end of the 2010s alone. Because the vast majority (80-90%) of those detained in Xinjiang are men, we have also limited the context to male detainees only.

This is a project of the Xinjiang Victims Database, conceived as part of a general review of pre-trial detention centers in the region, which we believe are a particularly important but underresearched aspect of the general detention system. The current version is only a demo, and is limited to the detention cell area specifically. You may use the arrow keys to move along predefined paths/areas. To look up or down, hold the Shift key and press the up/down arrows. With the exception of the solitary-confinement cells at the end of the hall and the two doors to the side and behind you, you can walk directly through any door and enter any of the cells, as well as ascend to the surveillance area via the stairs. A full version allowing you to explore the entire facility is planned for release in the second half of 2026.