The Horrors in Xinjiang

This month’s huge document dump has exposed the truth about China’s concentration camps in Xinjiang province. Official government documents (all online thanks to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) expose the prison-like conditions: guard posts, “perfect peripheral isolation” and “internal separation,” as well as constant monitoring of prisoners, even during “class, eating periods, toilet breaks, bath time, medical treatment, family visits, etc.”

Guards are ordered to “never allow escapes, never allow trouble.”

For all Beijng’s pretense that the camps are “vocational training centers,” notes the Associated Press, “manner education” is mandatory, while “vocational skills improvement” is offered only to those who’ve already done a year in the camps.

The mostly Muslim Uighyrs of Xinjiang have a strong identity, born out of a long independent history before China annexed the area in the 18th century.

President Xi Jinping is determined to break that spirit. To govern Xinjiang, he brought in Chen Quanguo, a veteran of ruthless oppression in Tibet. Uncaring of the Orwellian implications, they’ve set up a Ministry of Justice to run the camps with one express purpose: to “wash brains, cleanse hearts, support the right, remove the wrong.”

The AP report details the “patrol towers and high walls” that enclose what former inmates call “a concentration camp” with “rape, brainwashing and torture.”

How should the civilized world respond? One suggestion is a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. And organizations such as the NBA plainly need to rethink their efforts in China, as do the tech companies that are aiding in Big Brother monitoring of the entire province.

The West welcomed China into the world economy on the assumption that it would lead to more enlightened government there. The horrors in Xinjiang are just the latest evidence that it’s done the reverse.