Police, Uyghur Twitter Campaign Contradict China’s Claim to Have Emptied Camps
Aug. 1, 2019 - China’s assertion that it has released 90 percent of the million-plus Uyghurs held in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) internment camps was refuted by police in the region and by members of the Uyghur community living in exile who launched a twitter campaign challenging the claim.
China presented the two top ethnic Uyghur officials in the XUAR at a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday to deliver a surprising claim that the vast majority of Uyghurs had completed training in re-education camps and rejoined their families.
“The majority of people who have undergone education and training have returned to society and returned to their families,” Erkin Tuniyaz, the vice chairman of the XUAR government, told the news conference.
“Most have already successfully achieved employment,” he said. “Over 90 percent of the students have returned to society and returned to their families and are living happily,” said Tuniyaz, who was flanked by Shohrat Zakir, the XUAR government chairman.
The two Uyghur men work under XUAR Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, the architect of the system that has incarcerated up to 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas since April 2017.
The claims, which were presented without evidence, were met with dismissal and derision by leading human rights experts and Uyghur diaspora groups, who described the statements as the latest in a long history of Chinese disinformation about Xinjiang. One expert warned that released detainees could be drafted for forced labor in factories.
“China is making deceptive and unverifiable statements in a vain attempt to allay worldwide concern for the mass detentions of Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s regional director for East and South-East Asia.
“Given China’s record of heavy censorship, outright falsehoods and systematic obfuscation about the situation in Xinjiang, it remains imperative that UN human rights investigators, independent observers and the media be given unrestricted access to the region as a matter of urgency,” he added.
The Germany-based World Uyghur Congress while slamming the Chinese claim noted that Zakir’s own sister and several other relatives have received political asylum in Western countries after fleeing Chinese repression.
#prove90% hits Twitter
In a view consistent with other human rights and Uyghur groups, Bequelin said Amnesty had “received no reports about large scale releases – in fact, families and friends of people who are being detained tell us they are still not able to contact them.”
In an effort to verify the XUAR officials’ assertions RFA’s Uyghur Service, conducted telephone interviews with police in the region.
“I did not hear that anybody was released from the education. We would have been informed if anybody had been released,” said a policeman at a village police station in Hotan (Hetian in Chinese).
“There are 1700 people in the village, and about 250 of them are in the education camps, and so far we have only one person, aged between 40- 50, who was released,” said the policeman, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity due to the risk of punishment for talking to foreign media.
A Uyghur woman in Hotan City told RFA that seven of the 12 houses on her street have been left “ empty and padlocked” by the re-education campaign.
“All of them were sent to the education camps for about two years,” she said, describing the detained Uyghurs as all business people from Karakax (Moyu, in Chinese) county in Hotan.
“There are fewer people everywhere, even in the city. Stores are open, but there are very few people who are shopping and there is a money shortage,” added the woman.
In Kumul (in Chinese, Hami) prefecture, one official in the Kumul city neighborhood committee said he didn’t know that any inmates had been released. Asked about the XUAR government figure presented in Beijing, he then stated: “maybe 90 percent.”
Another person from the Kumul city neighborhood committee told RFA, however, that: “We have about 100 people undergoing ‘education’ from our district and three of them were released so far.”
Meanwhile, the Uyghurs living in exile with relatives incarcerated in the XUAR have conducted a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #prove90%.
“ China show me my parents, my cousin Ilzat and my other relatives. #prove90 % (of) concentration camp detainees (are) being released as you stated. It’s been years since I last heard my parents’ voice,” wrote a man calling himself Alfred Uyghur.
‘Where the hell is my father-in-law?’
Another Uyghur man on Twitter, Arslan Hidayat, wrote “#China says they’ve released 90% of #Uyghurs from “Re-Education” camps, then where the hell is my father-in-law, prominent actor and comedian ‘Adil Mijit’?”
Adil Mijit, a well-loved Uyghur comedian, went missing in late 2018, and social media sources as well as anonymous reports shared with RFA confirmed he was now serving a three-year prison term for making a trip to the Muslim holy city of Mecca without authorities’ permission.
The latest campaign follows a similar one in February, when after China showed a video of a Uyghur mistakenly thought to have died, the Uyghur exile community had launched a social media campaign under the hashtag #MeTooUyghur, calling on Chinese authorities to release video of their relatives who were missing and believed detained in the vast camp network.
Beijing initially denied the existence of internment camps, but changed tack earlier this year and started describing the facilities as “boarding schools” that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization and help protect the country from terrorism.
Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media outlets that those in the camps are detained against their will and subjected to political indoctrination, routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.
RFA has also discovered repeatedly that many of the Uyghurs forced to go through vocational training were already highly educated, accomplished professionals in various fields.
The mass incarcerations of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kirgiz have prompted increasing calls by the international community to hold Beijing accountable for its actions in the region, and Tuesday’s claim that many Uyghurs were released was seen as an effort to blunt that criticism.
The Global Times , a tabloid published by the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, doubled down on the “vocational education” propaganda on Thursday in an editorial praising the purported release of “trainees.”
“This time, the autonomous region released a great amount of crucial information on the vocational education and training centers. Information received by the Global Times through other channels also shows that a great number of trainees have indeed graduated and returned to the society,” it said.
“Although officials have yet to publish detailed figures, the improving situation of Xinjiang is expanding to all spheres. As a powerful interim measure, the vocational education and training centers play a pivotal role in making these achievements possible,” said the daily.
Reported by Mamatjan Juma and Alim Seytoff for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Paul Eckert.
View this story online at: [ https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/twitter-campaign-08012019163200.html | https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/twitter-campaign-08012019163200.html ]
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA ’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the U.S. Agency for Global Media ( [ https://www.usagm.gov/home/ | USAGM ] ) .
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RFA Breaking News: Skeptical Scholar Says Visit to Xinjiang Internment Camps Confirms Western Media Reports
Aug. 29, 2019 - An Albanian scholar and commentator who traveled to China at Beijing’s invitation this month to disprove what he believed was biased Western media coverage of mass incarcerations of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) said his experience there confirmed the reports as true.
Olsi Jazexhi, a university lecturer with a PhD in nationalism studies, was selected by China to participate in a conference for journalists in the XUAR from Aug. 16-24, during which he toured several internment camps, where authorities are believed to have held more than 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” since April 2017.
“I had positive views regarding China and China’s foreign policy, and sometimes I think that China is treated unfairly by the West,” he told RFA’s Uyghur Service in a recent interview, adding that “this is probably one of the reasons I was selected to participate in this conference.”
“Reports that China was building internment camps and persecuting the Uyghurs seemed unbelievable … I was very eager to go to Xinjiang because I wanted to explore for myself what is going on there. But after visiting, I found that much of what we hear in the West about China is not actually ‘fake news.’”
Jazexhi said that after arriving, he was given tours of the XUAR capital Urumqi, as well as the regional cities of Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) and Kashgar (Kashi), during which he and other visitors were told by handlers that the region historically belonged to China, while Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims who live there are the descendants of “invaders,” whose culture is subordinate to that of Han Chinese.
“This official narrative was very shocking to us, and we could see it put into practice when we visited the mass detention centers … that our Chinese friends call vocational training institutes, but which we saw to be a kind of hell,” he said.
While Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, China this year changed tack and began describing the facilities as “boarding schools” that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization, and help protect the country from terrorism.
But reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media outlets suggest that those in the camps are detained against their will and subjected to political indoctrination, routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.
Jazexhi said his group’s handlers rejected Western estimates of the number of detentions as “exaggerations,” and told him that “only 500,000 Uyghurs” are currently held in a total of 68 camps, several of which they were later brought to see on highly orchestrated visits.
At the Onsu (Wensu) County Vocational Training School in Aksu prefecture—the first camp the group visited—Jazexhi said he was “expecting to see suicide bombers, terrorists, killers, murderers, and what have you, but … we found out [the inmates] were innocent people.”
“The only crime they had committed was that they were Muslim and Uyghur,” he said.
The government-organized tours at the camp in Aksu and elsewhere had been arranged ahead of time, according to Jazexhi, and select groups of young Uyghur men and women were brought out to perform music and dances for him and other contributors to the media from India, Turkey, Afghanistan, and other countries.
“We understood it was a setup and told our Chinese friends that we hadn’t come for a party … We wanted to investigate what was going on—who were these people, what crimes had they committed, and why were they being held there,” he said of the visit to the Aksu internment camp.
“I left the dance party and went out to inspect the conditions in the detention center, and tried to interview some kids doing other things there, but our Chinese friends got very upset with me and made excuses about why I couldn’t speak with them.”
‘Paranoid’ handlers
Later, Jazexhi and others were brought to see detainees “study,” and he asked their instructor why they were being held there against their will.
“[The instructor] was telling me that it was a vocational school, but when I asked whether they were free to go home, he said, ‘no, they cannot leave,’” he said.
“In a way, it proved to us these are prisons where these kids are brought against their will.”
When Jazexhi addressed the Uyghurs at the camp with the traditional Muslim greeting of “as-salamu alaykum,” or “peace be upon you,” he said they responded with the Mandarin Chinese greeting of “ni hao,” and said they did not identify as Muslims or believe in Allah because they “believe in science and the [ruling Chinese] Communist Party.”
“What we understood from visiting these mass detention centers is that [the detainees] are totally prohibited from speaking Uyghur and are forced to speak Chinese all the time, as well as to renounce their religion,” he said.
“I began to understand that China built these centers to Sinicize the Uyghurs. If they want to get out of the internment camps, the condition is that they must renounce their Uyghur identity, God, their belief in Islam, their Uyghur language, and instead always speak in Mandarin Chinese and acknowledge the supremacy of the communist party.”
Jazexhi said his handlers explained that authorities also hope to assimilate Uyghurs by bringing Han Chinese workers and settlers to the XUAR, introducing economic incentives that mix Uyghurs and Han Chinese communities together, and indoctrinating Uyghurs with Han Chinese culture and respect for the government through mass incarceration, adding that they regretted not implementing these policies during the 1970s.
He called them “paranoid,” and said they would not permit members of the group to interview anyone—even people they passed in the streets—while members of the Uyghur community “were afraid to talk to us.”
“They told us that they knew we had seen things that we didn’t like on our visit, but that they didn’t want us to report anything bad about them,” Jazexhi said.
“I went to China with the good intention of countering the narrative we hear from the West, but what I saw was really horrific … What we learned from our visit is that the government of Xinjiang was implementing selective policies to punish Uyghur Muslims.”
Orchestrated tours
In a recent interview with ABC News, Adrian Zenz, an independent researcher who studies China's minority policies and first put forth the now widely accepted estimate of 1.5 million Uyghurs and Muslim minorities believed to have been held in the camps, suggested that tours to the facilities are staged prior to media arrival.
“My research has shown that these camps are being modified prior to the visits,” Zenz told ABC, which was recently granted rare on-camera tours of a center in Kashgar prefecture’s Yengisheher (Shule) county and another in Atush (Atushi) city, in Kizilsu Kirghiz (Kezileisu Keerkezi) Autonomous Prefecture.
“Satellite images before and after show that several months before visits are permitted, watchtowers and other security features such as metal fencing were removed from these camps,” he said.
At the end of its government-guided tour, ABC News said it asked Chinese officials to see other centers in the XUAR, specifically ones that satellite images showed had barbed wire fences and watchtowers, but its requests were denied.
Mass incarcerations in the XUAR, as well as other policies seen to violate the rights of Uyghurs and other Muslims, have led to increasing calls by the international community to hold Beijing accountable for its actions in the region.
Last month, at the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the internment camps in the XUAR “one of the worst human rights crises of our time” and “truly the stain of the century.”
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence also slammed the camps “where [Uyghurs] endure around-the-clock brainwashing” and survivors have described their experience as “a deliberate attempt by Beijing to strangle Uyghur culture and stamp out the Muslim faith.”
U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback recently told RFA in an interview that countries around the world must speak out on the Uyghur camps, or risk emboldening China and other authoritarian regimes.
The U.S. Congress has also joined in efforts to halt the incarcerations, debating legislation that seeks accountability for China’s harsh crackdown on the Uyghurs. The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act would appoint a special State Department coordinator on Xinjiang and require regular reports on the camps, the surveillance network, and the security threats posed by the crackdown.
Reported by Alim Seytoff for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
View this story online at: [ https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/scholar-08292019164346.html | https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/scholar-08292019164346.html ]
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA ’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the U.S. Agency for Global Media ( [ https://www.usagm.gov/home/ | USAGM ] ) .
If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to [ mailto:engnews-leave@rfanews.org | engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org ] . To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to [ mailto:engnews-join@rfanews.org | engnews-join(a)rfanews.org ] .
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 8, 2019
Contact: Rohit Mahajan | 202.530.4976 | mahajanr(a)rfa.org
<mailto:mahajanr@rfa.org>
Statement on the Charges Against Former RFA Journalists in Cambodia
WASHINGTON - The circumstances under which Radio Free Asia closed its office
in Cambodia have become a topic of scrutiny in the ongoing trial at the
Phnom Penh Municipal Court of former RFA journalists Uon Chhin and Yeang
Sothearin. With the trial due to resume on Friday, RFA would like to
reiterate that it considers the charges brought against Chhin and Sothearin
to be unsubstantiated and issue the following statement:
"Government pressure and threats led to an abrupt closure of Radio Free
Asia's Phnom Penh bureau on Sept. 12, 2017, in a serious setback to freedom
of the press in Cambodia. The situation RFA faced that week was sudden and
panicked. We had to wind up in a few days a news operation that had been
running for nearly 20 years. Dozens of local journalists and staff lost
their jobs. In the midst of this, RFA had to maintain its daily news report
that continued to be broadcast from our headquarters in Washington, D.C.
"Without any due process, the government was declaring journalism by RFA in
Cambodia to be illegal. We maintain that in a democratic society, reporting
the news should not be a crime. Contracts with our local staff were actually
valid until Sept. 30, and RFA has records of just one published story that
was filed by Chhin or Sothearin in the week the bureau closed. That was on
Sept. 15, three days after the closure. On the very same day that story was
published, the government said that RFA was still entitled to cover a news
conference it held in Phnom Penh.
"So not only did the government declare journalism by RFA to be illegal, it
sowed confusion in its own public statements on the matter. This has
culminated in the unjust prosecution of two of Cambodia's most dedicated,
independent journalists for simply doing their job to provide reliable
information to the Cambodian public."
###
To view this statement on Radio Free Asia's website, click here
<https://www.rfa.org/about/releases/charges-former-rfa-journalists-080820191
51515.html> .
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and
publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian
languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media.
RFA's broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and
expression, including the freedom to "seek, receive, and impart information
and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." RFA is funded by
an annual grant from the United States Agency for Global Media.
China Detains 60 North Korean Defectors, Sends Some Back
Aug. 7, 2019 -- China has detained about 60 North Korean defectors and begun repatriating them back to North Korea where they could face punishment, including execution, according to South Korean sources.
The defectors fleeing the brutal rule of Kim Jong Un have been held in detention facilities in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning bordering North Korea, according to a South Korean missionary, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
"I believe the repatriation of North Korean defectors held in detention facilities in Liaoning province has begun recently,” the missionary told RFA’s Korean Service, adding that the 60 North Koreans were arrested in various parts of China and imprisoned in Liaoning as of last month.
The missionary, who has been involved in helping defectors for the last two decades, as well as other activist and human rights groups believe defector arrests have spiked this year following appeals by the Kim Jong Un regime to Beijing to thwart those fleeing North Korea, especially military personnel or dignitaries.
The number of arrests of North Koreans fleeing to South Korea via China has increased significantly this year, according to human rights activists and other groups involved in efforts to help those leaving the hardline communist state in search of a better life.
China, Pyongyang's oldest benefactor, considers North Korean defectors as illegal economic migrants rather than refugees or asylum seekers and forcibly returns many of them to North Korea, which runs an illicit nuclear weapons program.
North Koreans who escape the isolated state typically face harsh punishments if they are sent back, including torture, sexual violence, hard labor, imprisonment in political or re-education camps, or even execution. Often their family members are also punished.
Numbers larger than previously reported
Young-ja Kim, Director General of the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR), told RFA that he believes the number of North Korean defectors arrested in China so far this year was larger than that reported by the South Korean media.
South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper last month quoted an activist who helps defectors as saying that at least 39 North Koreans had been detained in Liaoning.
South Korea's Unification Ministry said 546 defectors arrived in the country in the first six months of this year, up from 487 in the same period last year, the report said.
The spike in arrests could have stemmed from increasing North Korea-China cooperation following five summits between Kim and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the past 16 months, after years of no such high level meetings at all.
The two countries had signed a mutual cooperation treaty in 1986 for the maintenance of security and social order along their border areas.
“It is possible that the two sides have strengthened cooperation on the issue of North Korean defectors in China in the wake of the North Korea-China security diplomacy," said Kim In-tae, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul.
Aside from the increased cooperation, China's recent introduction of a facial recognition surveillance system is also hampering plans of North Korean defectors.
“The recent situation in which surveillance equipment has been installed in many parts of China also makes it difficult for the movement of North Korean defectors," an official of a North Korea defectors’ group in South Korea, who asked not to be identified because of his safety, told RFA.
"It feels like the Chinese authorities are tightening their surveillance and control over ordinary Chinese, and the situation seems to affect the arrest of North Korean defectors.”
Reported by Yong Jae Mok for RFA's Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai and Richard Finney.
View this story online at: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/defectors-08072019211049.html
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to <mailto:engnews-leave@rfanews.org> engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to <mailto:engnews-join@rfanews.org> engnews-join(a)rfanews.org .
Uyghur Man Held in Qatar Now En Route to US
Aug. 6, 2019 -- A Uyghur man facing deportation to China from Qatar last week is now on his way to the United States, U.S. government sources say.
Ablikim Yusup, 53, had appealed for days for help on social media posts from Qatar’s Doha International Airport, saying that he feared for his safety if sent back.
Yusup had previously tried to enter Europe by way of Bosnia, a Muslim-majority country, but had been sent back to Qatar, which then said it would deport him to Beijing, according to media reports.
“We can confirm that Mr. Ablikim Yusup is safely en route to the United States,” a U.S. State Department spokesman said on Tuesday.
“The United States is alarmed by China’s highly repressive campaign against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslims in Xinjiang,” the State Department said.
“This campaign includes mass arbitrary detentions. The Chinese government has, by our estimates, detained more than one million individuals since April 2017.”
“In these camps, there are credible reports of torture, inhumane conditions, and deaths. Individuals there are forced to renounce their ethnic identities, religious beliefs, or cultural and religious practices,” the State Department said.
“We will continue to call on China to reverse its counterproductive policies that conflate terrorism with peaceful religious and political expression, to immediately release all those arbitrarily detained, and to cease efforts to coerce members of its Muslim minority groups residing abroad to return to China to face an uncertain fate,” the State Department said.
Meanwhile, Germany-based World Uyghur Congress welcomed news of Yusup’s flight to the U.S., adding, “The international community must take steps to ensure Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are provided protection.”
Many held in camps
Authorities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have held up to 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas in internment camps since April 2017.
While Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, China this year changed tack and started describing the facilities as “boarding schools” that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization, and help protect the country from terrorism.
Claims by China this week that it has already released almost all of those held in the camps were met with skepticism by human rights and Uyghur exile groups, who said that China is seeking to blunt demands for accountability for its treatment of Muslim ethnic groups in the Xinjiang region.
In July, Qatar joined several other Muslim states including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain in publicly supporting China’s actions in Xinjiang, telling the U.N. in a joint letter that Beijing’s policies have countered terrorism in the region.
Reported by RFA's Uyghur Service.
View this story online at: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/route-08062019151423.html
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)
If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to <mailto:engnews-leave@rfanews.org> engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to <mailto:engnews-join@rfanews.org> engnews-join(a)rfanews.org .