The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
China paints Muslim re-education as ‘job-training’
HONG KONG — China will release some Muslim detainees held in the far western region of Xinjiang after they complete their “de-extremization education” by the end of this year, a regional leader said Tuesday as China unfurled its most extensive defense of the mass internment program to date.
In a lengthy state media article aimed at rebutting a mounting chorus of international criticism, Xinjiang’s de facto No. 2 official, Shohrat Zakir, characterized the detention program as an effort to provide legal education and job-training in humane, “people-oriented” facilities in a region steeped in poverty and religious fundamentalism.
Western governments and human rights groups, as well as a United Nations panel, estimate that China has held up to a million people - nearly all of whom belong to Muslim ethnic minorities - in a secretive network of reeducation centers operating outside the scope of Chinese courts. A growing body of first-person testimony from inside the centers, backed by satellite imagery and Chinese government documents and reports, have painted a picture of grueling facilities that ostensibly offer educational courses but operate to erase detainees’ sense of religious and ethnic identity through forced repetition, confessions and drills.
“As a result of the vocational education and training, the social environment of Xinjiang has seen notable changes, with a healthy atmosphere on the rise and improper practices declining,” said Zakir, who is himself a member of the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority that makes up a majority of those detained.
In the past decade, Xinjiang, a vast territory bordering Central Asia, and other parts of China have suffered a series of attacks, including bombings and mass knife assaults, that officials blame on Uighur extremists. And between 2013 and 2015, Syria-based militant groups have used messaging apps to goad hundreds, probably thousands, of men, women and children to flee the suffocating security environment in Xinjiang for the Middle East.
Chinese authorities responded with an unprecedented crackdown that combines sophisticated digital surveillance with a sprawling reeducation effort, sweeping up Muslim residents who maintain contact with overseas relatives, study at Islamic schools known as madrassas abroad or simply keep habits such as praying regularly or growing beards. The measures are vastly disproportionate to the militant threat facing China and could exacerbate violent extremism, international rights groups and U.S. State Department officials have warned.
Large numbers of people are believed to have been swept up since the centers began proliferating in 2017, and relatively few have emerged. Zakir signaled Tuesday that that might change once some students finish their training, although he did not give details about the number of detainees who might be released — or how many are held.
He did, however, acknowledge that some of those held had been merely “influenced” by extremism and did not commit crimes. Those detainees are receiving lenient treatment that involves lessons in Mandarin, garment-making and electronics assembly, he said in an apparent counterpoint to criticism about the mass detentions’ arbitrary and extrajudicial nature.
Zakir denied any mistreatment of detainees, instead describing them as liberated in a setting where radio, TV, sports, dancing and singing can be enjoyed by those who were previously under the sway of fundamentalist religion. “Now they have realized that life can be so colorful,” he added.
Hours later, China’s state broadcaster CCTV aired a 15-minute segment about the centers, in which men and women in uniforms were shown reciting from Mandarin textbooks, learning to sew and playing board games.
“Before, I didn’t have any skills,” a young man named Miqit said to the camera as a narrator explained how he previously did not work or study because he was consumed by religion. “Now my parents are happy. I am happy.”