[But the chairman of Xinjiang’s government, Shohrat Zakir, himself an ethnic Uighur, called the camps a “humane” and lawful shield against terrorism in an interview published by China’s official Xinhua news agency. He said the facilities gave Uighurs and other Muslims courses in the Chinese language and taught them to be law-abiding citizens. They also receive training in job skills such as making clothes, e-commerce, hairdressing and cosmetology, Mr. Zakir said.]
By Chris Buckley
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Security personnel near
the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, in the Xinjiang region
of China. Hundreds of
thousands of Muslims in Xinjiang have
been held in a network of
indoctrination camps.
Credit Ng Han
Guan/Associated Press
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BEIJING
— Under mounting
international criticism, China has given its most extensive defense yet of its
sweeping campaign to detain and indoctrinate Muslims, with a senior official on
Tuesday describing its network of camps in the far west as humane job-training
centers.
Rights groups, American lawmakers and a
United Nations panel have assailed the “transformation through education” camps
holding Uighurs and members of other Muslim minority groups in China’s far
northwestern Xinjiang region. Hundreds of thousands have been held in the camps
— one estimate says a million — and former inmates who have fled abroad have
described them as virtual prisons that engage in harsh brainwashing.
But the chairman of Xinjiang’s government,
Shohrat Zakir, himself an ethnic Uighur, called the camps a “humane” and lawful
shield against terrorism in an interview published by China’s official Xinhua
news agency. He said the facilities gave Uighurs and other Muslims courses in
the Chinese language and taught them to be law-abiding citizens. They also
receive training in job skills such as making clothes, e-commerce, hairdressing
and cosmetology, Mr. Zakir said.
Mr. Zakir said that “students” in the
facilities were provided with free meals, air-conditioned dormitories, movie screenings
and access to computer rooms.
“Xinjiang has launched a vocational education
and training program according to the law,” Mr. Zakir said. “Its purpose is to
get rid of the environment and soil that breeds terrorism and religious
extremism.”
Mr. Zakir did not say how many Muslims had
been sent to the camps, but he appeared to acknowledge for the first time that
people were being held against their will in the facilities for months or years
at a time.
He said the program dealt with people
suspected of wrongdoing that fell short of requiring criminal convictions, and
that they received “graduation certificates” only after signing agreements and
meeting certain criteria. Some detainees, he said, were being prepared for
release and assignment to jobs at the end of 2018.
Mr. Zakir suggested the campaign would
continue for many years. The “deradicalization” program is showing results, he
said, “but the duration, complexity and intensity remain acute, and we must
maintain high vigilance.”
Omurbek Eli, a businessman who has described
his time held in a camp in 2017, scoffed at Mr. Zakir’s description of the
indoctrination centers as “colorful” places where students play basketball,
watch movies and join in singing contests. His experience, he said, was far
harsher, involving long days of marching, singing patriotic Chinese songs and
memorizing Chinese laws.
“They’re full of nonsense,” Mr. Eli, who is
originally from Xinjiang and obtained Kazakh citizenship, said by telephone. “They
say that these camps are to eradicate terrorism, but inside I saw lawyers,
doctors, intellectuals, even officials who had nothing to do with extremism,”
he said. “They call these vocational training centers, but it was really a
prison.”
The publication of the interview with Mr.
Zakir confirmed a shift in China’s public relations strategy over the camps,
from silence to an unapologetic defense. Mr. Zakir even cited a United Nations
resolution on fighting terrorism to justify them.
As criticism of the detentions grew
throughout this year, the government first stayed silent. Then it gave sparing
acknowledgments of the camps’ existence. Appearing before a United Nations
panel in Geneva in August, a senior official in the Chinese delegation defended
the government’s measures yet denied that they amounted to mass detention.
But Mr. Zakir’s comments marked the first
full-throated defense of the indoctrination program, which grew out of policies
launched by Xi Jinping, China’s president and Communist Party chief.
Last week, the Xinjiang government issued
amended rules for its “deradicalization” program that for the first time gave
clear public authorization for the indoctrination camps.
On Tuesday evening, China’s main state
television network, CCTV, broadcast a current affairs program in prime time
that praised the camps and depicted them as caring, happy places. It showed a
class of Uighur students reading out a Chinese lesson titled, “I am a
law-abiding citizen.”
“After a year plus of denial, the Communist
Party has decided to get out in front of the story, and put forward its own
view over the legality and the nature of these detention camps,” James Leibold,
an expert on Xinjiang at La Trobe University in Australia, said by email. “The
party’s central leadership now seems determined to ‘standardize’ and ‘legalize’
their approach.”
Mr. Zakir’s comments appeared to be part of
China’s preparations for an international meeting that could put the camps
under further scrutiny. At a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council
in early November, foreign governments will have a chance to question officials
from Beijing about the detention program and other intrusive security measures
affecting Muslim minorities.
“This meeting is a very important occasion to
raise the camp issue,” Dolkun Isa, the president of the World Uyghur Congress,
an exile group based in Germany, said by telephone. (Uyghur is an alternative
spelling of Uighur.) “China has denied the camps, but now it’s something that
they just cannot hide.”
Western governments have indicated that
Xinjiang will be a priority at the Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva.
“We are deeply concerned by credible reports
pointing to a serious deterioration of the human rights situation” in Xinjiang,
Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s high representative for foreign
affairs and security policy, told the European Parliament earlier this month.
Last week, a bipartisan panel in Washington
issued a report condemning the indoctrination camps. Lawmakers on the panel,
including Senator Marco Rubio, proposed legislation that would punish China for
the detention program.
“In China, the government is engaged in the
persecution of religious and ethnic minorities that is straight out of George
Orwell,” Nikki Haley, who recently announced that she was stepping down as the
United States ambassador to the United Nations, said on Monday, according to
Fox News. “It is the largest internment of civilians in the world today.”
But Mr. Zakir’s account indicated that China
would maintain that the camps have strong backing in law. Up until 2014, China
was beset by a string of violent attacks and riots involving discontented
Uighurs.
“Now Xinjiang is not only beautiful,” Mr.
Zakir said, “it’s also very safe and stable.”
Still, Chinese officials have not given
foreign diplomats or journalists access to the camps, nor have they said how
many people they hold. Hu Xijin, a prominent editor of Global Times, a brashly
nationalist Chinese newspaper, said on Monday that he knew the number, and
denied it was a million.
Rights groups said the existence of the camps
exemplified the Communist Party’s use of legal justifications as a sweeping
cloak for measures that betray China’s own guarantees of rights and procedural
protections, as well as international law.
“The Xinjiang authorities’ clumsy
justifications for these camps only serve to illustrate what ‘the rule of law’
in China means,” said Maya Wang, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch.
“The party bends it to its will and uses it as a weapon against perceived
political enemies.”