Leaked data shows Uighurs detained because of religion
When a Chinese government mass detention campaign engulfed Memtimin Emer’s native Xinjiang region three years ago, the elderly Uighur imam was swept up and locked away, along with three of his sons.
Now, a leaked database exposes in extraordinary detail the main reasons for the detentions of Emer, his three sons, and hundreds of others in their neighbourhood: Their religion and their family ties.
The database profiles the internment of 311 individuals with relatives abroad in Karakax County, and lists information on more than 2000 of their relatives, neighbours and friends. Each entry includes the detainee’s name, address, national identity number, detention date and location, along with a dossier on their family, religious and community background, the reason for detention, and a decision on whether to release them.
Taken as a whole, the database offers the fullest view yet into how Chinese officials decided who to put into and let out of detention camps, as part of a crackdown that has locked away more than a million ethnic minorities, most of them Muslims.
The database shows that the state focused on religion as a reason for detention – not just political extremism, as authorities claim, but ordinary activities such as praying or attending a mosque.
‘‘It’s very clear that religious practice is being targeted,’’ said Darren Byler, a University of Colorado researcher studying Xinjiang. ‘‘They want to fragment society, to pull the families apart and make them much more vulnerable to retraining and reeducation.’’
The Xinjiang regional government did not respond to faxes requesting comment.
The Chinese government has said in the past that the detention centres are for voluntary job training, and that it does not discriminate based on religion.
China has struggled for decades to control Xinjiang, where the native, predominantly Muslim Uighurs have long resented Beijing’s rule. After militants set off bombs at a train station in Xinjiang’s capital in 2014, President Xi Jinping launched a so-called ‘‘People’s War on Terror’’, turning Xinjiang into a digital police state.
The database comes from sources in the Uighur exile community, and does not spell out which government department issued it or for whom. The detainees listed come from Karakax County, a traditional settlement on the edge of Xinjiang’s Taklamakan desert where more than 97 per cent of its roughly 650,000 residents are Uighur.
The database shows that cadres compile dossiers on detainees called the ‘‘three circles’’, encompassing their relatives, community, and religious background.
The detainees and their families are then classified by rigid categories. Households are designated as ‘‘trustworthy’’ or ‘‘not trustworthy’’. Families have ‘‘light’’ or ‘‘heavy’’ religious atmospheres, and the database keeps count of how many relatives of each detainee are locked in prison or sent to a ‘‘training centre’’.
Officials used these categories to determine how suspicious a person was – even if they hadn’t committed any crimes.
Former student Abdullah Muhammad described Emer as one of the most respected imams in the region. He fed the hungry, bought coal for the poor, and treated the sick with free medicine.
But though Emer gave Partyapproved sermons, he refused to preach Communist propaganda, Muhammad said, eventually running into trouble with authorities. He was stripped of his position as an imam in 1997.
Though he stopped attending religious gatherings, in 2017 authorities detained Emer, now in his eighties, and sentenced him to prison. The database cites four charges in various entries: ‘‘stirring up terrorism’’, acting as an unauthorised ‘‘wild’’ imam, following the strict Saudi Wahhabi sect and conducting illegal religious teachings.
Emer is now under house arrest due to health issues, Muhammad has heard. It’s unclear where Emer’s sons are. Though deprived of his mosque and his right to teach, Emer had quietly defied the authorities for two decades by staying true to his faith.
‘‘He never bowed down to them – and that’s why they wanted to eliminate him,’’ Muhammad said. – AP