- Activists have documented nearly 500 camps and prisons run by Beijing
- The number of detainees could greatly exceed the commonly cited figure
- A top Pentagon official said the figure was ‘likely closer to three million’
- The US likens the Muslim camps to Nazi Germany’s concentration camps
- But China argues they are necessary for curbing terrorism and extremism
By AFP
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China could be holding far more than one million Muslims in internment camps, researchers have claimed.
Uighur activists said yesterday that they had documented nearly 500 camps and prisons run by the country to hold members of the ethnic group, alleging that the number of detainees could greatly exceed the commonly cited figure.
The East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, a Washington-based group that seeks independence for the mostly Muslim region known to China as Xinjiang, gave the geographic coordinates of 182 suspected ‘concentration camps’ where Uighurs are allegedly pressured to renounce their culture.
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A perimeter fence is constructed around what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in Xinjiang in China’s far west region. Activists have claimed that the number of Muslim detainees in China could greatly exceed the commonly cited figure
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A building of what is officially called a vocational skills education centre in Hotan, Xinjiang. China has acknowledged the existence of such camps, but says they are needed to stamp out terrorism. Former detainees previously revealed that Muslims were forced to eat pork there
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Satellite images purported to show the camps where Muslim minorities are held in XinjiangPolice lead hundreds of blindfolded and shackled prisoners in ChinaLoaded: 0%Progress: 0%0:00PreviousPlaySkipMuteCurrent Time0:00/Duration Time1:45FullscreenNeed Text
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Researching imagery from Google Earth, the group said it also spotted 209 suspected prisons and 74 suspected labor camps for which it would share details later.
‘In large part these have not been previously identified, so we could be talking about far greater numbers’ of people detained, said Kyle Olbert, the director of operations for the movement.
‘If anything, we are concerned that there may be more facilities that we have not been able to identify,’ he told a news conference in suburban Washington.
Anders Corr, an analyst who formerly worked in US intelligence and who advised the group, said that around 40 per cent of the sites had not been previously reported.
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Muslim wives in China have been forced to share the same bed as visiting Chinese officials when their Uighur husbands are being detained in internment camps, reports claim (file photo)
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China has also kept thousands of Uighur children away from their Muslim parents before indoctrinating them in camps posing as schools and orphanages, studies show (file photo)
Rights advocates have generally estimated that China is detaining more than one million Uighurs and members of other predominantly Muslim Turkic ethnicities.
But Randall Schriver, the top Pentagon official for Asia, said in May that the figure was ‘likely closer to three million citizens’ – an extraordinary number in a region of some 20 million people.
Olbert said that archive imagery from alleged camp sites showed consistent patterns — steel and concrete construction over the past four years along with security perimeters.
He said that the group tried to verify the nature of each site with on-the-ground accounts but declined to give greater detail, citing the need to protect sources.
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Beijing is also said to be destroying Muslim graveyards where generations of Uighur families are buried and replace them with car parks and even playgrounds. This photo shows what used to be a traditional Uighur cemetery before it was destroyed in Shayar in the region of Xinjiang
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This photo from September 12 shows bones at a place where before there was a Uighur cemetery in Shayar, Xinjiang. The mass demolition has also left behind broken tombs
Activists and witnesses say China is using torture to forcibly integrate Uighurs into the Han majority, including pressuring Muslims to give up tenets of their faith such as praying and abstaining from pork and alcohol.
Olbert described China’s policy as ‘genocide by incarceration,’ fearing that Uighurs would be held indefinitely.
‘It’s like boiling a frog. If they were to kill 10,000 people a day, the world might take notice,’ he said.
‘But if they were just to keep everyone imprisoned and let them die off naturally, perhaps the world might not notice. I think that’s what China is banking on,’ he said.Chinese Muslims face terrible conditions in re-education campsLoaded: 0%Progress: 0%0:00PreviousPlaySkipMuteCurrent Time0:00/Duration Time1:39FullscreenNeed Text
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Omir Bekali, who claims to be a former detainee, cries as he details the psychological stress endured while in an internment camp. The programme aims to rewire detainees’ thinking
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Dozens of students are shown at their desks learning Chinese and law in the programme aired by CCTV that introduced the ‘professional vocational training institutions’ in Hotan
China has justified its policy after first denying the camps, saying that it is providing vocational training and coaxing Muslims away from extremism. Hundreds died in 2009 riots in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi that largely targeted Han Chinese.
The United States has likened China’s treatment of Uighurs to Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, but an increasingly strong Beijing has faced limited criticism outside the West.
China last month secured a statement at the United Nations by nations including Russia, Pakistan and Egypt – which have all faced criticism of their own records – that praised Beijing’s ‘remarkable achievements in the field of human rights.’Chinese government systematic campaign against Turkic MuslimsLoaded: 0%Progress: 0%0:00PreviousPlaySkipMuteCurrent Time0:00/Duration Time3:25FullscreenNeed Text
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Uighur men are seen leaving a mosque after prayers in Xinjiang’s Hotan city on May 31, 2019
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China is systematically indoctrinating Uighur Muslim children with detainee parents in what has been described as ‘children’s education camps’, investigation has shown (file photo)
The Uighur activist group said it periodically added data including on the destruction of cemeteries in Xinjiang, which was documented in an investigation last month by AFP using satellite imagery.
The movement said it had unsuccessfully asked the State Department for satellite data in hopes of improving its information sources.
US lawmakers have also spoken out increasingly on Xinjiang.
In a recent letter, Representative Jim McGovern and Senator Marco Rubio, who head the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, urged customs authorities to take ‘aggressive action’ to ban imports of goods from Xinjiang made with forced labor.