A rare and huge leak of Chinese government documents has shed new light on a security crackdown on Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region, where Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) ordered officials to act with “absolutely no mercy” against separatism and extremism, the New York Times reported.
Human rights groups and outside experts say more than 1 million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been rounded up in a network of internment camps across the far-western region.
The 403 pages of internal papers obtained by the Times provide an unprecedented look into the highly secretive Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) controversial crackdown, which has come under increasing international criticism, especially from the US.
Photo: Reuters
The documents include previously unpublished speeches by Xi, as well as directives and reports on the surveillance and control of the Uighur population, the newspaper said on Saturday.
The leak also suggests that there has been some discontent within the party about the crackdown.
The documents were leaked by an unnamed member of the Chinese political establishment who expressed hope that the disclosure would prevent the leadership, including Xi, from “escaping culpability for the mass detentions,” the Times said.
In a 2014 speech to officials made after militants from the Uighur minority killed 31 people in a train station in southwestern China, Xi called for an all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” using the “organs of dictatorship,” and showing “absolutely no mercy,” the Times said.
In the speeches, Xi did not explicitly order the creation of a large network of camps, but called for the party to use the “organs of dictatorship” to deal with extremism.
The internment camps expanded rapidly following the appointment in 2016 of a new CCP chief in Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo (陳全國).
Chen, according to the Times, distributed Xi’s speeches to justify the crackdown and urged officials to “round up everyone who should be rounded up.”
Reputed within the party for his handling of minority groups, Chen earlier led iron-fisted policies aimed at crushing dissent in Tibet.
The trove of leaked documents included a guide to answering questions from students who had returned home to Xinjiang to find their families missing or detained in camps.
Officials were instructed to say the students’ family members had been infected with the “virus” of extremist thinking and needed to be treated before “a small illness becomes a serious one.”
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Xinjiang regional government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The documents also shed light on the party’s punishment of one official, Wang Yongzhi (王勇智), who was investigated from 2017 to last year for disobeying party orders.
Wang released on his own initiative more than 7,000 people from camps in Xinjiang, and feared that “rounding up so many people would knowingly fan conflict and deepen resentment,” according to a confession by Wang leaked to the Times.
China, after initially denying the camps, has described them as vocational schools aimed at dampening the allure of Muslim extremism and violence through education and job training.
However, rights groups and foreign media have reported that official documents and satellite images show the facilities are equipped and run like prisons.
The leak “confirms in black and white, in the party’s own words, its conscious and systematic extrajudicial mass internment of Muslims in Xinjiang,” said James Leibold, an expert on ethnic relations in China and a professor at Melbourne’s La Trobe University.
The documents show that “there was resistance on a local level” with local officials who disagreed with the policy facing punishment or being purged, Leibold said.
The fact that the documents were leaked is “a significant indicator that there are many inside the party who think this is an unwise policy and wish to hold Xi Jinping and Chen Quanguo accountable,” he said.
Additional reporting by the Guardian
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique