The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) has become a hot point on the global stage, with the United States and other nations calling for China to allow outside observers to tour the area and check for labor and human rights abuses.
Numerous reports over the past five years allege more than 2 million Uyghurs, a Muslim people who have made the region of northwestern China their homeland, have been forced into “re-education camps,” which have been compared to prison camps. There also are allegations of forced labor and of violent oppression of Uyghurs.
The U.S. has used the term “genocide” to describe how the Chinese government has treated the Uyghurs.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued reports of the abusive treatment.
The recently released Xinjiang police files have only added to the clamor for openness and inspections.
The files are a collection of speeches, images, documents and spreadsheets documenting the treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic citizens in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region by internal police networks.
The camp is guarded by hundreds of police, including heavily armed “special police units.”
There has been considerable pushback on the allegations of human rights abuse. Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told State Newswire the police files are bogus, referring to them as a “trick.”
“The so-called ‘Xinjiang police files’ is the latest example of the anti-China forces’ smearing of Xinjiang,” Pengyu said. “It is just the same trick they used to play before. The lies and rumors they spread cannot deceive the world, nor can they hide the fact that Xinjiang enjoys peace and stability, its economy is thriving and its people live and work in peace and contentment.”
The Xinjiang police files challenge the image that Beijing wants the world to see of a people willingly taking vocational training when they are nothing more than a concentration camp, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation President and CEO Andrew Bremberg previously told State Newswire.
Included in the files are more than 2,800 photographs that include mugshots of detainees, images of police drills and interrogation methods. Also included are police spreadsheets of detainees, camp security directives, transcripts of internal speeches by senior Chinese Communist Party officials and even evidence linking key government officials to the abuses.
According to Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, the files contain photos of detainees forced to watch propaganda while being threatened by guards with large clubs; photos of SWAT teams conducting anti-escape drills from the internment camps; photos of detainees being interrogated while placed in a “Tiger Chair.” Photos of guards performing forced medical injections on handcuffed detainees; satellite images confirming that camp construction began in 2017 and features four large buildings and a high surrounding wall with three exterior watchtowers.
On Thursday the U.S., Great Britain and other nations called on the International Labour Organization to tour the region and monitor how the indigenous people were being treated. They also said China should guarantee that the inspections are done in an open, unsupervised fashion.
