Uyghur detention camps in China revealed in leaked ‘Xinjiang police files’

Uyghur incarceration camps in China are revealed in leaked ‘Xinjiang police files.’
The materials were secured by professor Adrian Zenz and published as UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet prepares to travel to Xinjiang for a long-awaited and contentious visit.

The materials were secured by professor Adrian Zenz and published as UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet prepares to travel to Xinjiang for a long-awaited and contentious visit.

Activists claim that Chinese authorities have incarcerated over a million Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in a network of detention centres and prisons across the region, which Beijing defends as training facilities.

However, the trove of police photos and internal documents sent to Zenz by an anonymous source who hacked into official Xinjiang databases adds to evidence that the mass internments were not voluntary, with leaked documents showing top leaders in Beijing, including President Xi Jinping, calling for a harsh crackdown.

A 2017 internal speech by Chen Quanguo, a former Communist Party secretary in Xinjiang, purportedly asks guards to shoot anyone who tries to flee and calls for officials in the province to “take tight control over religious believers,” according to the files.

Direct directives from Xi to raise the capacity of detention centres were mentioned in a 2018 internal address by public security minister Zhao Kezhi.

After originally denying the existence of the institutions, Beijing now claims they are vocational training institutes that are attended willingly and are aimed at combating religious extremism.

However, the released documents reveal how leaders viewed minorities as a security concern, with Zhao warning that more than two million individuals in southern Xinjiang alone had been “severely influenced by the infiltration of radical religious ideology.”