Repeated History : China’s Draconian Concentration Camps
- Camille
- Jun 28, 2021
- 9 min read
Updated: Jun 30, 2021
As of 2021, it is estimated that around 3 million of the Uyghur ethnic minority group has disappeared. More than a million have been arbitrarily arrested and held against their will in internment camps situated in Xinjiang, China. This type of subjugation doesn’t just emerge out of the blue, ethnic minorities living in China have suffered under dystopian mass surveillance, forced assimilation and governmental repression for many years.
Religion in China
Article 34 of the Chinese Constitution claims that citizens are able to “enjoy freedom of religious belief”. However, this can be contested as this freedom comes with heightened government control of donations, celebrations as well as restrictions on religious schooling and the surveillance of online religious activities. Furthermore, Human Rights Watch’s Sophie Richardsons explains that although the constitution protects religious belief, the measures taken by the government does not guarantee religious practice nor worship since they are only allowed under the criteria of “normal'' religious activities. The word “normal”, in this case, is left undefined and can be broadly interpreted.
Who are the Uyghurs? Why is the government targeting them?
The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic, predominately muslim, group recognized as natives in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, northwest China.
As an atheist state, the CCP sought to push and shape all religions to conform to Han Chinese’s society rules and the official atheist party’s teachings. Following 9/11, the government declares a “Global war on Terrorism” by combatting, at all cost, religious extremism, separatism and international terrorism.
For years, Chinese authorities have attempted to justify their crackdown on Uyghurs over concerns of religious extremism and suspicions of terrorism. In a series of leaked secret files revealed by the New York Times in 2019, President Xi Jinping laid down the groundwork for the crackdown in Xinjiang. Additionally, the Chinese Government seems to characterize any expression of the Islamic faith as extremist products of past independence movements that allegedly entails occasional outbursts of violent activities.
Propaganda & Indoctrination
By using the 2009’s Urumqi riots, where Uyghur demonstrators protested against state-sanctioned Han Chinese migration over their region and systematic discrimination , officials were able to transform Beijing’s relatively passive attitudes of Uyghurs into a discriminatory and aggressive perspective. They then reinforced this by blaming attacks of government offices, Tiananmen Square and open-air markets on the muslim minorities.
After international backlash because of the discovery of the camps, China has only intensified its propaganda, going as far as sanctioning US and Canadian politicians and academics who have spoken up about its treatment of Uyghur muslims and forbidding them from entering the country. Western brands such as H&M, Nike & Uniqlo, who have stopped using materials from Xinjiang over concerns of forced labour, were also boycotted by the State. In addition, international branches of Chinese state broadcasters have also aired documentaries defending and justifying the government’s clampdown on Uyghur Muslims.
Mass Surveillance
Although mass surveillance is widespread in the country, Uyghur muslims suffer under particularly intense and intrusive monitoring, HRW reports . One of the most notable technologies used by the state is The Integrated Joint Operations Platforms, or IJOP. It’s a policing program and a giant governmental database which collects private datas of individuals and flags all those considered to be “potentially threatening”. The information this app gathers ranges from blood types, height, “religious atmosphere” to political affiliation. HRW’s reverse engineering of the app reveals that authorities target specifically 36 types of individuals. Those who stop using smartphones, those who don’t socialize often with neighbors and those who “collected money or materials for mosques with enthusiasm” falls in this category. The app also prompts officials to investigate citizens by notifying them of “suspicious behaviors'' which usually are lawful, ordinary activities such as the use of an “unusual” amount of electricity, the purchase of new electronics for domestic use, renovations works and so on.
Other notable Orwellian policies that the government has adopted is the compulsory medical examination program “Physical For All” in which authorities would collect DNA samples, finger prints, blood types from children as young as 12 to elders as old as 65 years. During passport processes or police checkpoints, their voice samples would also be collected. This information would then transfer to a searchable government database in which biometric portraits would be created to keep tabs and gather even more data on its citizens.
As a surveillance state, China has put in place a network of CCTV cameras throughout Xinjiang that are capable of both facial and license plate recognition. The government also implements Wifi surveillance technologies and security checkpoints that collect identifying information of individuals.
Based on constant monitoring and data tracking, a list is generated of people who fit these vague criterias and who will be examined by officials for detention.
Life only gets harsher for former detainees as the government only intensifies their intrusive surveillance of the victims’ lives. HRW reports that Chinese authorities frequently monitor former detainees’ relatives and regularly surveil their emotions and behaviors “along metrics such as whether their thoughts are “stable”; whether they can “recognize their mistakes”. These former detainees and other turkic muslims in Xinjiang, though free from the camps, still reside in a semi-physical prison where they tread regularly on the possibility of being incarcerated if officials deem them “suspicious”.
Forced Assimilation: Cultural & Religious Erasure
"Most of the Uyghur books that were burned were about science, technology, religion, history, culture, and Uyghur craftsmanship," said Abdujelil Karkash, director of the opposition East Turkestan Information Center, in an interview conducted by Radio Free Asia in 2002. The organization reports that chinese authorities have been actively burning Uyghur literature which were considered to be promotions of seperatist religious beliefs. The burnings included 128 copies of A Brief History of the Huns & Ancient Uyghur literature and 32 320 copies of Ancient Uyghur Craftsmanships which contains “centuries-old Uyghur techniques of papermaking, candle-making, carpentry, carpet-making, and silk-weaving”. The state-owned Kashgar Uyghur Publishing House has also censored 330 books which were deemed as problematic.
By using satellite imagery, ASPI was able to uncover an estimation of the demolition & damage of around 16 000 mosques in Xinjiang of which 8,500 has been demolished completely. They also claimed that 30% of culturally important Uyghur sites have been destroyed across the region with the addition of 28% being desecrated and altered, all of which includes “shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage routes, including many protected under Chinese law”. Many of these cemeteries are the final resting place for generations of Turkic Muslims, HRW reports.
The CCP also adopted policies in 2017 which sought to reduce extremist behaviors by implementing measures such as the prohibition of “abnormal” beards, the wearing of veils, the refusal to watch state television, and the naming of children to “exaggerate religious fervour”.
Forced Sterilization
Although “family planning” and birth rates regulations has been nothing new to the country, the CCP has tightened its grip on population control in Xinjiang for the past few years, intruding into the reproductive autonomy of Uyghur women in the region. Subsequently birth rates in Xinjiang have dramatically fallen by 84% between 2015 and 2018.
Government documents from 2019 revealed plans for fundings of mass sterilization in the region, subjecting most married-women of childbearing ages with intrusive birth prevention surgeries such as IUDs.
Additionally, former detainees of the camps have also revealed that they were given/injected with unknown drugs by authorities of the camps, that would impact their menstruations. Doctors then confirmed that these women were in fact sterilized. Other detainees explained that officials led them to believe that IUDs were mandatory procedures and had them prior to their interment.
The Karakax List, leaked by Journal of Political Risk in February 2020, revealed that refusal of birth control & prevention is the most common reason for internment.
Mass Incarcerations, Arbitrary Arrest & Enforced Disappearances
Ever since the CCP escalated their “Strike Hard Campaign Against Terrorism” in late 2016/early 2017, the amount of arrests made in Xinjiang has dramatically increased. Though the number of arrests made are highly disputed, ranging from ten of thousands to 1 million, Xinjiang Victim Database have estimated that 300 000 were arrested since the escalation of the campaign in 2016.
In interviews of detainees and their relatives conducted by HRW, it was revealed that individuals were arrested and put in detentions without evidentiary basis, meaning that authorities didn’t present any warrants, evidence of crime, documentation, and failed to notify these individuals of which authorities were responsible for the arrest. Interviews of detainees from 2017 to 2018 have also revealed that some were subjected to forced confession and deprived of access to lawyers.
In a report done by CHRD (Chinese Human Rights Defenders), lawyers who have handled cases in Xinjiang attested that ethnic minorities have lesser legal protection than their Han Chinese counterparts such as the turkic muslims on trial for “terrorism” who are not allowed to plead “not guilty”. They have also said that if they protested against the violations of their client’s rights, they would face possible dismissal from the case. These lawyers also believe that their client’s rights to proper court procedures have also been taken away from them as there are claims that verdicts of some of these cases have been decided even before the trials take place.
Moreover, some individuals were arrested without officials notifying their relatives about their whereabouts or their well-being. Although some do receive reports of their relatives being transferred to internment camps, others aren’t even notified if their family members are alive or if they ever were transferred to the camps. There also have been reports of cases where individuals were detained while their children were away at school. In a New York Times Report, it was revealed that the government has issued directives on “handling questions about detained family members from students who return home at the end of the academic semester”.
Systematic Torture & Forced Labour
Detainees are held in so called “Vocational Skills Education Training Centers” (“职业技能教育培训中心”) of which, according to government statements, are built with the intention of “wash brains, cleans hearts, support the right, remove the evil” (“洗脑净心扶正祛邪”) of those interned in them. Reports of deaths in the camps have surfaced, along with concerns of both physical and psychological abuses and conditions of the camps such as overcrowding.
Aside from heightened surveillance and monitoring in the camps, the detainees are also subjected to intense attempts at brainwashing, cultural and religious erasure. With the eyes of the guards & the cameras surveilling them at any moment of the day, those detained in the camps lost all autonomy and the ability to move freely in these institutions.
Individuals interned at the camps are “forced to learn Mandarin Chinese, sing praises of the Chinese Communist Party, and memorize rules applicable primarily to Turkic Muslims”. Former detainees have also attested to learning over 1000 Chinese characters until they spoke the language for officials to deem them to be loyal chinese subjects and in-turns release them. It’s also important to note that this can be extremely difficult as the elderly, the disabled, children and the illiterate are forced to study this extremely complex language.
These “training centers” use military-style tactics to discipline and politically indoctrinate the detainees. Those who have been interned described having been required to “fold blankets neatly, like in the military”, attend flag-raising ceremonies, sing propaganda songs, stand & march like soldiers. The rules that they were forced to memorize ranges from the ban of Islamic greetings to the ban of forming group chats on WeChat. Detainees have also said that those who refuse to comply with authorities were punished, with the punishments ranging from standing under the scorching sun to being beaten by guards.
Moreover, these detainees are also subjected to forced labour under a labour transfer program, part of a government policy called “Xinjiang Aid” (援疆). Revealed in an ASPI report, it’s estimated that more than 80 000 Uyghurs have been transported to factories where practices of the camps are also enforced. The reports have also identified 27 factories in 9 different provinces that are sourcing Uyghur workers from Xinjiang since 2017. These factories have claimed to be supply chains of over 88 global brands. The most prominent information revealed from the report was that local governments and brokers, those who arrange these transfers and organise the labour assignments are paid a price per individual transferred, by the Xinjiang provincial government themself. For the list of companies who potentially, directly or indirectly benefit from these factories:
Aside from the forced labour and intense mass surveillance in the camps, detainees are also subjected to ill-treatment by the guards and systematic toture sanctioned by the State. Amnesty reported that those detained suffer from “the cumulative psychological effect of their daily dehumanization, as well as physical torture in the form of beatings, electric shocks, solitary confinement, deprivation of food, water and sleep, exposure to extreme cold, and the abusive use of restraints, including torture tools like tiger chairs. Some reported being restrained in a tiger chair for 24 hours or more.” Moreover, ex-detainees have also testified for having been sexually assaulted, abused and at times gang raped regularly by guards of the camps.
References :
https://thediplomat.com/2021/05/what-do-chinese-people-think-is-happening-in-xinjiang/
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-repression-uyghurs-xinjiang
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/20090406_china.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html
https://thediplomat.com/2019/07/bearing-witness-10-years-on-the-july-2009-riots-in-xinjiang/
https://www.ft.com/content/80a4500d-84b0-4e4e-b208-7cf3e7d80df4
https://www.dw.com/en/china-sanctions-us-canadian-officials-over-xinjiang/a-57026474
https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2019/05/02/china-how-mass-surveillance-works-xinjiang
https://nationaltechnology.co.uk/AI_Emotion_Sensors_Tested_On_Uyghurs_In_Xinjiang.php
https://www.reuters.com/article/china-xinjiang-int-idUSKBN1710DD
https://livingotherwise.com/2020/12/09/the-elephant-in-the-xuar-i-entire-families-sentenced/.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/10/china-free-xinjiang-political-education-detainees.
https://www.nchrd.org/2018/07/criminal-arrests-in-xinjiang-account-for-21-of-chinas-total-in-2017/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/03/uighurs-too-scared-to-search-for-missing-family/
https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-treatment-of-muslim-uighurs-in-xinjiang-i-had-the-chills/a-52431839
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