[A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Geng Shuang, criticized the newspaper’s report, published on Sunday, saying the article smeared China’s efforts against extremism. But he did not dispute the authenticity of the leaked internal documents that confirmed the coercive nature of the measures used against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in western China over the past three years.]
By
Steven Lee Myers
 |
|
Hotan, in the western
Chinese region of Xinjiang, in August. The low yellow
buildings once housed a
re-education camp. Credit Gilles Sabrié
for The New York Times
|
BEIJING
— The Chinese government on
Monday portrayed the country’s crackdown in the western region of Xinjiang as a
great success against terrorism, trying to counter renewed international
criticism prompted by a New York Times article detailing the internal
deliberations that led to the mass detention of Muslims in re-education camps
and prisons.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Geng Shuang, criticized the newspaper’s report, published on Sunday,
saying the article smeared China’s efforts against extremism. But he did not
dispute the authenticity of the leaked internal documents that confirmed the
coercive nature of the measures used against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims
in western China over the past three years.
A statement from the Xinjiang regional
government of China was far more strident, saying the Times article had been
“completely fabricated by hostile forces at home and abroad” and calling it
“total nonsense and a pack of lies, with sinister motives behind it.”
The regional government’s statement did not
specifically deny the authenticity of the documents on which the article was
based, but repeatedly attacked what it described as fictitious reporting by The
Times.
“Concocting fake news to attract eyeballs is
a habitual trick of America’s New York Times, and this newspaper suffered a
crisis of credibility for its fakery,” the statement said. “This time,
America’s New York Times has again fabricated and concocted fake news about
Xinjiang. This is nothing more than getting up to its old tricks, and is
completely unworthy of refutation. This despicable conduct will surely be met
with the contempt of wiser minds in the international community.”
The documents, provided by a member of the
political establishment in China who is concerned about the crackdown, showed
the direct involvement of senior officials in conceiving and ordering it. The
papers included internal speeches by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, that laid the
philosophical groundwork for the policy.
Mr. Geng, the foreign ministry spokesman, was
asked about the article at a regularly scheduled briefing.
“It is precisely because of a series of
preventive counterterrorism and de-extremism measures taken in a timely manner
that Xinjiang, which had been deeply plagued by terrorism, has not had a
violent terrorist incident for three years,” he said.
The Communist government once flatly
dismissed reports on the mass detentions of as many as one million Muslims as
fabrications, but since evidence of the camps has become irrefutable, it has
stepped up attempts to defend its actions as justifiable steps to stamp out a
national security threat.
Xinjiang has experienced violent attacks, but
their extent remains unclear, in part because the authorities censored reports
on them at the time and continues to restrict independent reporting.
After The Times published its report, China’s
state media tried to rebuff criticism from ethnic Uighurs in the United States,
whose criticism has been highlighted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The
Global Times, a newspaper owned by the Communist Party, reported that its own
reporters had visited the relatives of those Mr. Pompeo cited and found them
living happily in Xinjiang.
“They are ashamed of the scum among their
families,” the report said, referring to the Uighurs now living abroad.
The Chinese efforts have not tempered
international criticism.
A group of 12 United Nations human rights
experts has presented the Chinese government with a scathing critique of its
counterterrorism laws and de-radicalization regulations, warning that they
flout binding obligations under international law and risk stoking the
extremism they are said to be intended to prevent.
In a 21-page letter addressed to Foreign
Minister Wang Yi, the experts said that laws and regulations that provide the
legal framework for China’s mass incarceration of Uighurs and other Muslims are
“neither necessary nor proportionate.”
“While cognizant of the security situation
that China may face,” they said, “we are deeply concerned that the approaches
taken in the counterterrorism law not only violate fundamental rights but also
may contribute to further radicalization of persons belonging to the targeted
minorities, creating major and growing pockets of fear, resentment and
alienation.”
The letter added that “multiple laws, decrees
and policies, in particular those concerning national security and terrorism,
deeply erode the foundations for the viable social, economic and political
development of society as a whole.”
The chilling details contained in the
documents obtained by The Times — such as Mr. Xi’s description of Islamist
radicalism as a virus or a drug addiction that required “a period of painful,
interventionary treatment” — prompted new condemnations from Western
politicians.
Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne,
called the disclosures disturbing, as did several American politicians,
including Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and Elizabeth Warren and
Pete Buttigieg, two leading candidates in the Democratic presidential race.
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said the treatment of the Uighurs was
“among the worst abuses of human rights in the world today.”
Given the sensitive nature of the subject —
and the source — China’s state media made little other mention of the issue.
The Times’s website is blocked in China, but there were signs that the
disclosures had filtered through the country’s so-called Great Firewall, as
they received unexpected expressions of support.
One user on Weibo, one of China’s most prominent
social media platforms, singled out an official cited in the documents, Wang
Yongzhi, who had been assigned to oversee the city of Yarkand, a cultural
capital of the Uighurs. Mr. Wang, part of the Han ethnic majority in China,
initially put in place many harsh measures, but became increasingly concerned
about their effectiveness. When he quietly ordered the release of more than
7,000 camp inmates, he was arrested.
“History will not forget this person and this
page of paper,” wrote the user, identifying himself as Still Your Old Yang.
Others expressed support for the official who leaked the documents.
But Mr. Geng, the Foreign Ministry spokesman,
said that Xinjiang had become a model for counterterrorism efforts.
“The New York Times not only shut its eyes
and ears to the above-mentioned facts,” he said, “but even use the clumsy
tricks of grafting flowers and twigs to taking out of context and hyping the
so-called internal documents to smear and discredit China’s antiterrorism and
de-extremism capabilities in Xinjiang.”
Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from
Geneva.
Steven Lee Myers is a veteran diplomatic and
national security correspondent, now based in Beijing following tours in
Moscow, Baghdad and Washington. He is the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and
Reign of Vladimir Putin.” @stevenleemyers
