Many researchers claimed on Tuesday that there is a leak of hundreds of images and official documents from China’s Xinjiang. Hence, this casts new light on the brutal techniques used to enforce widespread incarceration in the area.
The data was secured by professor Mr. Adrian Zenz who works for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, the U.S. And as soon as this got published, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet prepared to travel to Xinjiang for a long-awaited and contentious visit.
Many activists claimed that Chinese authorities have incarcerated over a million Uyghurs and other primarily Muslim minorities. They are in a network of detention centres and prisons across the region, which Beijing defends as training facilities.
Uyghur Muslims are abused in Xinjiang, as revealed in police files.
The trove of police photographs and internal documents was sent to Mr. Zenz. It was sent by an anonymous source who hacked into official Xinjiang databases. Thus, it adds to evidence that the mass interments were not voluntary. Also, the leaked documents showed top leaders in Beijing, including President Xi Jinping, calling for a repressive crackdown.
Former Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo gave an internal speech in 2017. Where, he purportedly asks guards to shoot anyone who tries to flee and also calls for officials in the province to “take tight control over religious believers,” according to the data.
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 their existence, Beijing now claims the facilities are voluntarily attending vocational training courses geared at combating religious extremism.
However, the released documents reveal how leaders viewed minorities as a security concern. Furthermore, Zhao warned that more than two million individuals in southern Xinjiang alone had been “severely impacted by the incursion of radical religious ideology.”
Mugshots
Minors such as 17-year-old Zeytunigul Ablehet, who was jailed for listening to an illegal speech. Another 16-year-old Bilal Qasim was presumably convicted for being linked to other detainees. There were over 2,800 police images of Xinjiang detainees.
In video comments posted alongside the hacked papers, Mr. Zenz claimed that the type of paranoid danger perception can easily be seen in these files. And also, the internal reason for why one has to move against an entire community.
In prison, officers appear to be using batons to subdue hooded and shackled convicts while other guards in camouflage stand by with weapons.
The specifics of the freshly released documents were described by UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as “shocking.” She further asked China to provide Bachelet “full and unrestricted access to the region so that she may conduct a thorough assessment of the facts on the ground.”
The stolen documents were described by China’s Foreign Ministry as “cobbled-together information.” It was created by anti-China forces tarnishing Xinjiang, with spokesman Wang Wenbin blaming the media for “spreading lies and rumors.”
