Uighurs had traveled to both countries, he said, and could return to China as seasoned fighters seeking an independent homeland, which they called East Turkestan.”
#Nytimes chinese concentration camps series
The NYT report says: “President Xi Jinping, the party chief, laid the groundwork for the crackdown in a series of speeches delivered in private to officials during and after a visit to Xinjiang in April 2014… Setting aside diplomatic niceties, he traced the origins of Islamic extremism in Xinjiang to the Middle East and warned that turmoil in Syria and Afghanistan would magnify the risks for China. The NYT leaked documents claim there is a large personal footprint of President Xi in his country’s Uighur policy. What is the role played by the Chinese leadership? The government claims it is providing the inmates vocational skills, but many of those detained are professors, doctors, skilled professionals, so it is not clear what are these “skills” are supposed to achieve.
#Nytimes chinese concentration camps software
The government has put in place a surveillance system that includes face recognition cameras, software to monitor Uighurs’ phone activities, QR codes on homes that tell authorities how many members are inside the house, QR codes on any domestic tool that can be used as a weapon, such as a knife.Ĭontacting people outside China is one of the surest ways to be sent to a camp. Those who still persist with questions are told there is a credit system in place to decide when the inmates can leave the camps, and their behaviour will impact their relatives’ credit.īecause the inmates have not been charged for any crime, there is no question of a legal fight against their detention.īut even those who are not in the camps are not quite free. They are told they should be grateful the government is taking pains to reform their relatives “infected by the virus” of radicalism. The documents leaked to The NYT speak of the official line prepared for the children of inmates who have returned from colleges - “elite” children with connections to social media and other parts of China. And I could hear other people screaming as well.”Ī woman has spoken of how she saw a fellow inmate die for want of medical attention to menstrual bleeding, and how the camps were so crowded they had to stand and sleep in shifts. All these tools were displayed on the table in front of me, ready to use at any time. They had thick wooden and rubber batons, whips made from twisted wire, needles to pierce the skin, pliers for pulling out the nails. Children whose guardians have been taken away are being put in these facilities, where one of the things they will be taught is loyalty to China.įrom inside the internment camps have come reports of torture.Ī former inmate told the BBC: “They wouldn’t let me sleep, they would hang me up for hours, and they would beat me. The building of the internment camps has been accompanied by a hectic building of boarding schools and kindergartens. In three years, the government is estimated to have put one million people in the “re-education” camps, making them leave behind their jobs, property - and their children. The newspaper says the leaked papers consist of 24 documents, which “include nearly 200 pages of internal speeches by Xi and other leaders and more than 150 pages of directives and reports on the surveillance and control of the Uighur population in Xinjiang. What exactly are these documents?Īccording to The New York Times, “the papers were brought to light by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed hope that their disclosure would prevent party leaders, including Xi, from escaping culpability for the mass detentions.” Recently, however, a set of leaked government documents have reached The New York Times, giving a behind-the-scenes look into how and why the camps were set up, what is happening there, and what the government seeks to achieve from them. China resolutely denies all such allegations, claiming the camps to be ‘educational centres’ where the Uighurs are being cured of “extremist thoughts” and radicalisation, and learning vocational skills.
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