China’s Repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang
More than a million Muslims have been
arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region. The reeducation camps are just
one part of the government’s crackdown on Uighurs.
A Uighur man works at his shop in Kashgar in the
Xinjiang region. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
WRITTEN BY
UPDATED
Last updated June 30, 2020
Summary
·
About eleven million Uighurs—a mostly Muslim,
Turkic-speaking ethnic group—live in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
·
The Chinese government has imprisoned more than one
million people since 2017 and subjected those not detained to intense
surveillance, religious restrictions, and forced sterilizations.
·
The United States has sanctioned officials and
blacklisted dozens of Chinese agencies linked to abuses in Xinjiang.
Introduction
The
Chinese government has reportedly detained more than a million Muslims in
reeducation camps. Most of the people who have been arbitrarily detained are
Uighur, a predominantly Turkic-speaking ethnic group primarily from China’s
northwestern region of Xinjiang.
Human
rights organizations, UN officials, and many foreign governments are urging
China to stop the crackdown. But Chinese officials maintain that what they call
vocational training centers do not infringe on Uighurs’ human rights. They have
refused to share information about the detention centers, and prevented
journalists and foreign investigators from examining them. However, internal
Chinese government documents leaked in late 2019 have provided important
details on how officials launched and maintain the detention camps.
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When did mass detentions of Muslims start?
Some
eight hundred thousand to two million Uighurs and other Muslims, including
ethnic Kazakhs and Uzbeks, have been detained since April 2017, according
to experts and government
officials [PDF]. Outside of the camps, the eleven million
Uighurs living in Xinjiang have continued to suffer from a decades-long
crackdown by Chinese authorities.
Most
people in the camps have never been charged with crimes and have no legal
avenues to challenge their detentions. The detainees seem to have been targeted
for a variety of reasons, according to media reports, including traveling to or
contacting people from any of the twenty-six countries China considers
sensitive, such as Turkey and Afghanistan; attending services at mosques;
having more than three children; and sending texts containing Quranic verses.
Often, their only crime is being Muslim, human rights groups say, adding that
many Uighurs have been labeled as extremists simply for practicing their religion.
Hundreds
of camps are located in Xinjiang. Officially known as the Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region, the northwestern region has been claimed by China since
the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949. Some Uighurs living
there refer to the region as East Turkestan and argue that it ought to be
independent from China. Xinjiang takes up one-sixth of China’s landmass and
borders eight countries, including Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Experts
estimate that Xinjiang reeducation efforts started in 2014 and were drastically
expanded in 2017. Reuters journalists, observing satellite imagery, found
that thirty-nine
of the camps almost tripled in size between April 2017 and
August 2018; they cover a total area roughly the size of 140 soccer fields.
Similarly, analyzing local and national budgets over the past few years,
Germany-based Xinjiang expert Adrian Zenz found that construction spending on
security-related facilities in Xinjiang increased by 20 billion
yuan (around $2.96 billion) in 2017.
What is happening in the camps?
Information
on what actually happens in the camps is limited, but many detainees who have
since fled China describe harsh conditions. Detainees are forced to pledge
loyalty to the CCP and renounce Islam, they say, as well as
sing praises for communism and learn Mandarin. Some reported prison-like
conditions, with cameras and microphones monitoring their every move
and utterance. Others said they were tortured and subjected to sleep
deprivation during interrogations. Women have shared stories
of sexual abuse, with some saying they were forced to undergo
abortions or have contraceptive devices implanted against their will. Some
released detainees contemplated suicide or witnessed others kill themselves.
Detention
also disrupts families. Children whose parents have been sent to the camps are
often forced to stay in state-run orphanages. Uighur parents living outside of China often face a difficult
choice: return home to be with their children and risk detention, or stay
abroad, separated from their children and unable to contact them.
Why is China detaining Uighurs in Xinjiang now?
Chinese
officials are concerned that Uighurs hold extremist and separatist ideas, and
they view the camps as a way of eliminating threats to China’s territorial
integrity, government, and population.
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President
Xi Jinping warned of the “toxicity of religious extremism” and advocated for
using the tools of “dictatorship” to eliminate Islamist extremism in a series
of secret
speeches while visiting Xinjiang in 2014. In the speeches,
revealed by the New York Times in November 2019, Xi did not
explicitly call for arbitrary detention but laid the groundwork for the
crackdown in Xinjiang.
Arbitrary
detention became widely used by regional officials under Chen Quanguo,
Xinjiang’s Communist Party secretary, who moved to the region in 2016 after
holding a top leadership position in Tibet. Known for increasing the number of
police and security checkpoints, as well as state control over Buddhist
monasteries in Tibet, Chen has since dramatically intensified security in
Xinjiang. He repeatedly called on officials to “round up everyone who should be
rounded up,” according to the New York Times report.
In
March 2017, Xinjiang’s government passed an anti-extremism law that prohibited
people from growing long beards and wearing veils in public. It also officially
recognized the use of training centers to eliminate extremism.
Workers
walk along the fence of a likely detention center for Muslims in Xinjiang
Province on September 4, 2018. Thomas
Peter/Reuters
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Under
Xi, the CCP has pushed to Sinicize
religion, or shape all religions to conform to the officially
atheist party’s doctrines and the majority Han-Chinese society’s customs.
Though the government recognizes five religions—Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism,
Islam, and Protestantism—it has long feared that foreigners could use religious
practice to spur separatism.
The
Chinese government has come to characterize any expression of Islam in Xinjiang
as extremist, a reaction to past independence movements and occasional
outbursts of violence. The government has blamed terrorist attacks on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a separatist group founded
by militant Uighurs, in recent decades. Following the 9/11 attacks, the Chinese
government started justifying its actions toward Uighurs as part of the Global
War on Terrorism. It said it would combat what it calls “the three
evils”—separatism, religious extremism, and international terrorism—at all
costs.
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Joe Biden on Foreign Policy
In
2009, rioting in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, broke out as mostly Uighur
demonstrators protested against state-incentivized Han Chinese migration in the
region and widespread economic and cultural discrimination. Nearly two hundred
people were killed, and experts say it marked a turning point in Beijing’s
attitude toward Uighurs. In the eyes of Beijing, all Uighurs could potentially
be terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
During
the next few years, authorities blamed Uighurs for attacks at a local government
office, train station, and open-air market, as well as Tiananmen Square in
Beijing. The government also feared that thousands
of Uighurs who moved to Syria to fight for various militant
groups, including the self-proclaimed Islamic State, after the outbreak of
civil war in 2011 would return to China and spark violence.
Are economic factors involved in this crackdown?
Xinjiang
is an important link in China’s Belt
and Road Initiative, a massive development plan stretching through
Asia and Europe. Beijing hopes to eradicate any possibility of separatist
activity to continue
its development of Xinjiang, which is home to China’s largest
coal and natural gas reserves. Human rights organizations have observed that
the economic benefits of resource extraction and development are often
disproportionately enjoyed by Han Chinese, and Uighur people are increasingly
marginalized.
Many
people who were arbitrarily detained have been forced to work in factories
close to the detention camps, according to multiple
reports [PDF]. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute
estimates that since 2017 eighty thousand previously detained Uighurs have
been sent to factories throughout
China linked to eighty-three global brands. Researchers from the Center for
Strategic and International Studies say forced labor is an important element of
the government’s plan for Xinjiang’s economic development, which includes
making it a hub of textile and apparel manufacturing. Chinese officials
have described the policy as “poverty alleviation.”
What do Chinese officials say about the camps?
Government
officials first denied the camps’ existence. Starting in October 2018,
officials started calling them centers for “vocational education and training
programs.” In March 2019, their official name became “vocational training
centers,” and Xinjiang’s governor, Shohrat Zakir, described them as “boarding
schools” that provide job skills to “trainees” who are voluntarily
admitted and allowed to leave the camps. But documents leaked in late 2019
showed how officials worked to repress Uighurs, lock them in camps, and prevent
them from leaving.
Chinese
officials publicly maintain that the camps have two purposes: to teach
Mandarin, Chinese laws, and vocational skills, and to prevent citizens from
becoming influenced by extremist ideas, to “nip terrorist activities in the
bud,” according to a government
report. Pointing out that Xinjiang has not experienced a terrorist
attack since December 2016, officials claim the camps have prevented violence.
The
government has resisted international pressure to allow in outside
investigators, saying anything happening inside Xinjiang is an internal issue.
It denies that people are forced to denounce Islam, are detained against their
will, and experience abuse in the camps. In early 2019, it
organized several trips for foreign diplomats to visit Xinjiang
and tour a center; a U.S. official criticized them as “highly
choreographed.”
What is happening outside the camps in Xinjiang?
Even
before the camps became a major part of the Chinese government’s anti-extremism
campaign, the government was accused of cracking down on religious freedom and
basic human rights in Xinjiang.
Experts
say Xinjiang has been turned into a surveillance state that relies on
cutting-edge technology to monitor millions of people. Under Xinjiang’s
Communist Party leader, Chen, Xinjiang was placed under a grid-management
system, as described in media reports, in which cities and villages
were split into squares of about five hundred people. Each square has a police
station that closely monitors inhabitants by regularly scanning their
identification cards, taking their photographs and fingerprints, and searching
their cell phones. In some cities, such as western Xinjiang’s Kashgar, police
checkpoints are found every one hundred yards or so, and facial-recognition
cameras are everywhere. The government also collects and stores citizens’
biometric data through a required program advertised as Physicals
for All.
Much
of that information is collected into a massive database, known as the
Integrated Joint Operations Platform, which then uses artificial intelligence
to create lists of so-called suspicious people. Classified Chinese government
documents released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
(ICIJ) in November 2019 revealed that more than fifteen thousand Xinjiang residents were
placed in detention centers during a seven-day period in June 2017 after being
flagged by the algorithm. The Chinese government called the leaked documents
“pure fabrication” and maintained that the camps are education and training centers.
Many
aspects of Muslim life have been erased, journalists reporting from Xinjiang
have found. Communist Party members have been recruited since 2014
to stay
in Uighur homes and report on any perceived “extremist”
behaviors, including fasting during Ramadan. Officials have destroyed
mosques, claiming the buildings were shoddily constructed and unsafe for
worshippers. Uighur and other minority women have reported forced sterilizations and intrauterine device insertions,
and officials have threatened to detain anyone who has too many children.
Uighur parents are banned from giving their babies certain names, including
Mohammed and Medina. Halal food, which is prepared according to Islamic law,
has become harder to find in Urumqi as the local government has launched a
campaign against it.
Beijing
has also pressured other governments to repatriate
Uighurs who have fled China. In 2015, for example, Thailand
returned more than one hundred Uighurs, and in 2017 Egypt deported several
students. The documents released by ICIJ showed that the Chinese government
instructed officials to collect information on Chinese Uighurs living abroad
and called for many to be arrested as soon as they reentered China.
What has the global response been?
Much
of the world has condemned China’s detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang. The UN
human rights chief and other UN officials have demanded access to the
camps. The European
Union has called on China to respect religious freedom and
change its policies in Xinjiang. And human rights organizations have urged
China to immediately shut down the camps and answer questions about disappeared
Uighurs.
Notably
silent are many Muslim nations. Prioritizing their economic ties and strategic
relationships with China, many governments have ignored the human rights
abuses. In July 2019, after a group of mostly European countries—and no
Muslim-majority countries—signed a letter to the UN human rights chief
condemning China’s actions in Xinjiang, more than three dozen states, including
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, signed
their own letter [PDF] praising China’s “remarkable
achievements” in human rights and its “counterterrorism” efforts in Xinjiang.
Earlier in 2019, Turkey became the only Muslim-majority country to voice
concern when its foreign minister called on
China to ensure “the full protection of the cultural identities
of the Uighurs and other Muslims” during a UN Human Rights Council session.
In
October 2019, the United States imposed
visa restrictions on Chinese officials “believed to be
responsible for, or complicit in” the detention of Muslims in Xinjiang. It also
blacklisted more than two dozen Chinese companies and agencies linked to abuses
in the region—including surveillance technology manufacturers and Xinjiang’s
public security bureau—effectively blocking them from buying U.S. products. In
June 2020, President Donald J. Trump signed
legislation, passed with overwhelming support from Congress,
mandating that individuals, including Chen, face sanctions for oppressing
Uighurs. The law also requires that U.S. businesses and individuals selling
products to or operating in Xinjiang ensure their activities don’t contribute
to human rights violations, including the use of forced labor.
Human
Rights Watch has advocated
other actions the United States and other countries could take:
publicly challenging Xi; denying exports of technologies that facilitate abuse;
pressing China to allow UN investigators in Xinjiang; and preventing China from
targeting members of the Uighur diaspora. Activists have also called on the
United States to grant asylum to
Uighurs who have fled Xinjiang.
Recommended Resources
CFR’s
Jerome A. Cohen surveys what the United States and other countries can do to
challenge the Chinese government’s arbitrary detention in a July 2018 blog post.
The New
York Times analyzes more than four hundred pages of leaked Chinese government documents on
repression in Xinjiang.
The
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists unpacks a classified government manual instructing
officials on how to operate the detention centers.
Using
satellite imagery, Reuters analyzes how thirty-nine detention facilities have
rapidly expanded over seventeen months.
Human Rights Watch interviews former
Xinjiang residents, detainees, and their relatives to detail mass arbitrary
detention.
In Foreign
Affairs, Kelly Hammond, Rian Thum, and Jeffrey Wasserstrom
explore why President Xi is ramping up repression.
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