China keeps close eye on reporters going to Xinjiang

KASHGAR: The three men were so busy staging a fake car crash they failed to notice the very people they were trying to block: foreign journalists heading for one of China’s notorious internment camps.

A small truck slowly inched towards a car parked on the road before stopping — just short of contact — as the reporters drove past the scene.

The “accident” later drew a crowd of onlookers as a line of trucks queued down the highway. Police halted traffic, blocking the road leading towards the camp.

Though a botched attempt, this incident illustrates the great lengths Chinese authorities go to obstruct journalists from covering topics deemed sensitive in Xinjiang, a restive northwest region where large numbers of mostly Muslim ethnic minorities have been rounded up into reeducation camps.

On a recent six-day trip to Xinjiang, reporters were able to document three of them — razorwired complexes with imposing block buildings.

One was within walking distance of farmland, while another was clearly visible from nearby dwellings. One centre was just around the corner from a water park.

Since last October, the Xinjiang government has also organised camp tours for diplomats and media outlets.

But it has made independent reporting in the region extremely challenging, with journalists almost constantly followed by plainclothes officials, making it difficult to talk to locals without putting them at risk.

Roadblocks and construction work, which suddenly materialise when reporters near re-education camps, are also a constant headache.

When reporters tried to approach one internment camp in Hotan, roads were roped off within seconds after an unmarked car that had been following them sped ahead.

In the end, the only option was to photograph the camp — a fenced off compound surrounded by a swath of sand and desert scrub — from afar.

The security clampdown in Xinjiang, where authorities have implemented unprecedented levels of surveillance, has also made it impossible to move freely around the region.

Police checkpoints at city borders prevented reporters from travelling outside regional hubs without alerting local propaganda officials.

In some cases, whole cities were closed off.

While driving to Artux city, where a mosque is believed to have been destroyed, reporters was forced to turn around by police at a checkpoint who said the road was closed for driving tests — all day for the next five days.

“Please understand our work,” said the police officer.

At the same checkpoint, two women claiming to be tourists also appeared.

For the next hour, they followed reporters in a dark purple van because they were “lost”.

Even when reporters went past the fake car crash to take pictures of a camp from a nearby village, the tourists parked close by.

A man who said he was a village security guard later escorted the journalists out.

He left the “tourists” alone. While reporters found local authorities polite albeit unyielding — perhaps a reaction to the negative press resulting from police aggression — there were moments on the trip where it became unnervingly clear how closely they were being tracked.

In the city here, an ancient Silk Road City with a majority Uighur population, someone broke into a journalist’s hotel room after he stepped outside for a few minutes.

Upon returning, he found the door open and one of his bags had been moved.

Nothing was taken, but the message was clear: we are watching you.