New Delhi: A comprehensive inside view has now emerged from China about how Beijing has continued a coercive clampdown against a million Uyghurs and Kazakhs in internment camps in the Xinjiang province over the last three years.
The revelation has come via the leak of 403 pages of “internal documents” from within China’s ruling Communist Party, accessed and published by the New York Times last week.
“Senior party leaders are recorded ordering drastic and urgent action against extremist violence, including the mass detentions, and discussing the consequences with cool detachment,” notes the New York Times report.
“The leaked papers offer a striking picture of how the hidden machinery of the Chinese state carried out the country’s most far-reaching internment campaign since the Mao era.”
Over the past few years, China’s actions in Xinjiang to fight what it claims is Islamic terrorism have drawn international criticism. The province is a resource rich region where predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups — Uyghur being the largest — make up more than half the region’s population of 25 million.
Last month, the US government put sanctions on eight Chinese tech companies over Beijing’s coercive policies in Xinjiang.
Beijing, however, has continued to dismiss such charges and argued that it only uses “mild methods” at “job-training centres” — reported to be internment camps — to fight “Islamic terrorism”.
The leaked government papers paint a drastically different picture. Here are some highlights from the leaked documents.
Also read: China is illegally harvesting Uyghurs organs but the Muslim world is still silent
Xi’s secret speeches & expansion of internment camps
The leaked papers reveal that China’s President and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping delivered a number of secret speeches in 2014, in which he urged a dictatorial response to insurgency and terrorism.
This was in reference to a spate of bloody attacks by Uyghur militants in Xinjiang that occurred during Xi’s April 2014 visit to the region, just a year after he took office. Ethnic riots in 2009 in Xinjiang capital Urumqi also led to the crackdown.
Taking a leaf out of US’s “war on terror”, Xi in his speeches talked about showing “absolutely no mercy” in carrying out the security offensive. He also viewed terror attacks abroad as a cautionary tale of what happens when human rights are prioritised over national security.
Xi described Uyghurs as a threat to communism, tainting the Communist Party’s image. He expressed concerns that Uyghurs may travel to war-torn West Asian countries like Syria and Afghanistan and return to China with demands for a separate homeland.
The speeches were used as justification by party official Chen Quanguo, who after being appointed to govern Xinjiang in 2016, rapidly expanded the detention camps. He ushered in stricter security protocols, encouraged law enforcement overreach and purged “[local] officials suspected of standing in his way” including a rogue official, Wang Yongzhi — who released 7,000 camp inmates.
The New York Times writes that the phrase “round up everyone who should be rounded up”, coined by Chen, appears many times in internal documents.
Also read: After Uyghurs, another Muslim minority is under fire in China
Keeping children quiet
One of the biggest revelations in the leaked papers was a clinical question-and-answer directive for local law enforcement to be used for students who, upon returning home from university in the summer of 2017, would enquire about their missing family members and relatives.
According to the Q&A guide, officials were directed to inform students that their loved ones were in “training centres” for being exposed to radical Islamic beliefs. The students were also given the heavy responsibility of earning the “release of their family if they behaved”.
Preventing potential resistance from students, the directive was aimed to ensure stability in the region and keeping things silent.
‘Ideological cure’ for religious extremism
The documents show that religious extremism has been understood as a disease or a contagion in need of an “ideological cure”. President Xi Jinping outlined in his speeches that economic development won’t be enough to root out resistance among Uyghurs — transforming their beliefs is the only option.
The leaked documents show that former detainees attested to regimented routines in which they were forced to renounce Islamic beliefs and pledge loyalty to the Communist Party.
According to the Q&A guide, students were told their family members could leave “training centres” after “course completion” and meeting all standards, including mastering the “standard national language”, Mandarin.
The push for fluency in Mandarin goes hand-in-hand with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, “a quasi-military organization” that is part of Xi’s objective to usher in more Han Chinese (country’s dominant ethnic group) and alter the region’s demographic, where Uyghurs are currently a majority.
Who leaked the documents?
According to the New York Times, “a member of the Chinese political establishment”, who requested anonymity, leaked the papers in the hope that Xi Jinping and the ruling party would not get away with the mass detentions.
The leak shows that the crackdown caused dissent in the ruling party, revealing more doubts and discontent than previously known.
Internal doubts
The aforementioned rogue official, Wang Yongzhi, is one example of how the mass detentions were not unanimously embraced by party officials.
Thousands of Xinjiang officials were “punished for resisting or failing to carry out the crackdown with sufficient zeal”. Over 12,000 investigations were launched against those who didn’t do enough, and for “gravely disobeying the party central leadership’s strategy for governing Xinjiang”.
Also read: US increases pressure on China about persecution of Uyghur Muslims
It is good job by China, they have all rights to have mass crackdown on jihadi groups and their green virus ( green religion) .
Whether Xinjiang – where the human cost has been heartbreaking – or Hong Kong ( fine edition of Cut the Clutter ) – where so far there has been no significant loss of life – President Xi has shown poor governance ability. In the former, an excessive response to disaffected citizens possessing little more than knives and axes. Without placing at risk the monopoly of the ruling party, the government could have allowed China to evolve into a more harmonious society. One million Muslims cannot be deprived of their most basic religious freedoms and human rights. A slightly more bland President, like Hu Jintao, would have been better for China as it makes difficult transitions.
Why not China recognises the threat of Islamic terrorism. Why don’t you use your Arabic name.
Surprised that the usual commentators are missing from this thread …
The internal dissent aspect of this story is revelatory and I wonder what the rationale for it could be?
I hope the US and the EU, too, continue to apply political and economic pressure on the Chinese State, targeted at exploiting whatever the cause of the dissent is.
How can I disappoint you …
It is good job by China, they have all rights to have mass crackdown on jihadi groups and their green virus( green religion)