A cache of leaked files and photos sheds new light on the brutal methods used by the Chinese government towards the Muslim Uyghur minority in the northwestern Xinjiang region. China is accused of operating a network of centres in the region which reeducate Uyghurs, forcing them to unlearn their culture and religion. Over one million detainees are obliged to learn Mandarin Chinese and adopt a secular-aligned, pro-communist outlook.
The leaked files reveal that China allegedly uses a shoot-to-kill policy for Uyghurs who dare to escape the internment camps. Moreover, the documents contradict the official line of Chinese officials that the Uyghurs voluntarily choose to attend the centres. China’s Foreign Ministry rejected the leaked documents “as cobbled-together material” by “anti-China forces smearing Xinjiang.” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin has said the media is “spreading lies and rumours.”
German researcher says difficult ‘to fake this amount of image material’
Yet, Adrian Zenz, a US-based German researcher, said the files are almost impossible to fake. He said he received the cache from an anonymous source who hacked into official databases in Xinjiang. “It’s always possible to fake documents. It’s a lot harder to fake images, and it’s even harder to fake this amount of image material and this type of image material,” Zenz, a senior fellow in China studies at the Washington D.C.-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told DW. He said the leak was the result of “a hacking attack straight into police computers, even into internment camp computers, penetrating the Chinese systems and getting the evidence straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Zenz said the leaked files reveal the “the mass internment of completely innocent people,” with detainees including young teenagers and old women. “And the files don’t even say they’ve done anything. That’s merely guilt by association. These people simply have a parent in detention or a relative, and that’s really all that they’ve done.”
China’s abuses of Uyghurs ‘a brutal crime against humanity’
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth also backed the veracity of the documents, telling DW “we have every reason” to believe the files are accurate. “They certainly correspond with the many, many testimonies that Human Rights Watch have received,” Roth said of the findings. He called the human rights abuses towards Uyghurs “a brutal crime against humanity, the likes of which really do not exist anyplace else in the world today.”
The revelations pose troubling questions for world leaders alarmed by human rights abuses in Xinjiang. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on May 24, and mentioned “the shocking reports and new evidence of very serious human rights violations in Xinjiang.” Baerbock urged a “transparent investigation” into the allegations in the leaked files, according to a German Foreign Ministry statement.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price told journalists that “we are appalled by the reports and the jarring images.” “It would be very difficult to imagine that a systemic effort to suppress, to detain, to conduct a campaign of genocide and crimes against humanity would not have the blessing — would not have the approval — of the highest levels of the PRC government,” Price said, using the term for the People’s Republic of China.
UN trip to Xinjiang a ‘whitewash,’ Roth says
The release of the documents also comes as UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Michelle Bachelet is on an official trip to Xinjiang. Roth said he is “fearful” Bachelet is being used for propaganda purposes by China .Roth said Bachelet will not have the “ability to speak freely with Uyghurs” during the visit and learn what is really happening in the province. “And she’s going to be shown Uyghurs singing and dancing and pretending that they’re happy, which is the Chinese government line. You know, this is a complete whitewash,” Roth said.
COMMents
COMMents
SHARE