China defends detention camps for Muslims
BEIJING — Human rights activists say China’s arbitrary detention of up to a million Muslim members of ethnic minorities is grotesque. A U.S. government commission says the reeducation centers in the western region of Xinjiang may constitute a crime against humanity.
But in the most extensive government comments to date, a senior Chinese official makes them sound something like summer camps, with dancing, singing, writing and sports competitions to go along with free job training, food and movies.
Their aim is to “better guard against the infiltration of terrorism and extremism,” said Xinjiang government Chairman Shohrat Zakir in an interview with a state-owned news agency published Tuesday.
The camps are training people to work and to speak Chinese, “improve their communication abilities, gain modern science knowledge and enhance their understanding of Chinese history, culture and national conditions,” he said.
Human rights groups estimate about a million people, most of them Uighurs and Kazakhs, have been detained in the centers in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region since last year.
According to Human Rights Watch, detainees are forced to undergo political indoctrination for months to eradicate any Islamic, Turkic, Uighur or Kazakh sense of identity. They also must praise the Communist Party and learn 1,000 Chinese characters before being released, the group said.
Sophie Richardson, spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch, said in an interview Tuesday that the way Zakir described the camp system, “it sounds lovely.”
“But no amount of propaganda is going to suffice in the face of so much credible evidence of human rights violations,” she said.
The U.S. CongressionalExecutive Commission on China last week released a report charging that China’s arbitrary detention of Muslims may represent the largest incarceration of an ethnic minority population since World War II and may be a crime against humanity. A group of lawmakers has called for U.S. sanctions against officials involved in the policy.
Omer Kanat, director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said Zakir’s statements are “ludicrous and contemptible from top to bottom. This propaganda piece won’t fool anyone.”
U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet last month called on the Chinese government to allow independent rights monitors into the region. China responded that she should respect China’s sovereignty and “not listen to one-sided information.” This month the European Parliament called on China to end arbitrary detentions of minorities in Xinjiang.
In the face of the mounting pressure, Zakir insisted that China’s policy has proved successful in fighting terrorism. He said that religious extremism had been “effectively contained,” but that authorities must remain on high alert.
Zakir said the training is designed to counter religious or family disciplinary customs “concocted or distorted by extremists” and to replace them with a sense of being “firstly citizens of the nation.”
“Through vocational training, most trainees have been able to reflect on their mistakes and see clearly the essence and harm of terrorism and religious extremism,” he said. “They have notably enhanced national consciousness, civil awareness, awareness of the rule of law and the sense of community of the Chinese nation.”
He said offenders who committed minor terrorismrelated offenses have been offered a combination of “punishment and leniency” in the “vocational training centers.”
“Various activities such as contests on speech, writing, dancing, singing and sports are organized. Many trainees have said that they were previously affected by extremist thought and had never participated in such kinds of art and sports activities, and now they have realized that life can be so colorful,” he said.
Before receiving training, many people in the regions spoke little Chinese and were jobless and povertystricken, Zakir said. Now, he added, they want to lead modern lives.
Richardson said that “Beijing feels no particular pressure to change gears.”
“They clearly think that their strategy is appropriate,” she said by phone from Geneva. “It’s up to the rest of the world to point out that the arbitrary detention of up to a million members of an ethnic minority is grotesque and unacceptable.”
Zakir said Xinjiang has been victimized by thousands of terrorist attacks since the 1990s, including bombings, assassinations, poisonings, riots and assaults. Beijing has blamed Uighur separatists for much of the violence.
The violence included attacks in 2014 at markets in Urumqi and Kashgar in which a total of 65 people were killed, a knife attack at the Kunming railway station the same year that left 33 people dead and 143 injured, and a knife attack on sleeping coal miners in Aksu in 2015, in which 50 people died.
The attacks declined in 2016, according to state media, after a government crackdown. Since then, authorities have established an intensive surveillance network with near-blanket coverage by cameras, roadblocks, security checks, random monitoring of cellphones and the mass collection of DNA samples. It also established its sweeping system of detention and reeducation camps.
Restrictions on Muslims are now so stringent that they have “effectively outlawed Islam,” according to a Human Rights Watch report last month. Among the behaviors banned are wearing an “abnormal” beard, veiling the face, refusing to listen to state TV and radio or attend government schools, and applying halal rules to products such as toothpaste instead of just food.
In many cases, multiple members of one family have been detained, with children placed in state orphanages instead of with extended family, according to the Associated Press and Human Rights Watch.
“Reports of children being placed in orphanages against their families’ wishes are particularly alarming given the government’s sustained assault on the cultural identity of Turkic Muslim minority communities in Xinjiang,” Richardson said.
As criticisms have grown, Chinese officials have used different terms to describe the facilities. In early 2017, the terminology was “counter-terrorism training schools.” Then they were referred to as “socialism training schools” and now “vocational institutions.”
Zakir on Tuesday identified four prefectures in southern Xinjiang as hot spots that have continued to breed terrorism and religious extremism. “There is still a long way to go for southern Xinjiang to eradicate the environment and soil of terrorism and religious extremism,” he said.
Richardson said terrorism was not a justification for detaining such a large portion of the population.
“The scope and scale of the abuses that we are documenting are well beyond what’s legal and effective,” she said.