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The new phase of re-education camps in Xinjiang

2021-07-26T03:54:47.808Z


"What we are seeing being built now are maximum security facilities," according to expert Nathan Ruser.


Shahnura is 18 years old and has never known the name of her paternal grandmother. "At home, the issue of my father's family is never touched upon," says this young Uighur woman from Germany, where she was born after her parents went into exile. The entire paternal branch - ten siblings - is unaccounted for in Xinjiang, he assures, without the contact networks maintained by the Uighur community in exile giving an account of them. Neither of his mother's brothers: “we don't know anything about my aunt. They say about my uncle that he died ”. From his maternal grandmother - whom he has only been able to see once, six years ago - they do have news, through indirect sources: after more than a year in a re-education camp in Xinjiang, it seems that he has been able to return home. It also appears, they have been told, that she has returned very ill.

5,000 kilometers from where Shahnura is located, in southern Xinjiang, on the outskirts of the city of Kashgar in a southwesterly direction, is a huge complex of parallel buildings, surrounded by a wall.

A sign identifies it as a school for officials of the Communist Party of China.

Something that seems to confirm the large ideograms, in red, on the buildings closest to the road.

"Never forget the original intention, always remember the mission" is the slogan that, time and again, the Party has repeated during the celebrations of its centenary this year.

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But part of the wall is topped with barbed wire. In the background, two turrets can be seen. The aerial image taken by Google Maps at those coordinates appears to show, in one corner, a group of people in formation. There are several prisons around the complex. It is one of the detention centers that, scattered throughout Xinjiang, have come to host, according to UN agencies and NGOs, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, perhaps more than a million, within the re-education campaign against Islamic extremism China has launched since 2016. Nathan Ruser, Australian Strategic policy Institute (ASPI) and author of

Documenting Xinjiang's Detention System report

(Documenting the Detention System in Xinjiang), confirms that part of the buildings may have ceased to be used as a re-education center, but at least one of the blocks still retains that function.

Former re-education center in Kashgar, converted, at least partially into a Communist Party school Macarena Vidal Liy

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For two years, China consistently denied that it maintained these camps, despite mounting documentary evidence: satellite images, public tenders, testimonies from relatives of inmates. Finally, in 2018 it recognized its existence, as vocational training centers where - it assured - knowledge of Mandarin and civic education were also taught. These facilities were essential, according to Beijing, to uproot any kind of Islamic extremist ideas after years of attacks in the region that triggered an escalation in Chinese security measures. Also, the authorities assured, for the inmates to acquire training that would allow them to find decent jobs and keep them away from radical influences. Former inmates, on the other hand, speak of intense vigilance, armed guards,mistreatment or even torture in case of not progressing fast enough.

At that time, the camp system engulfed in its interior, like a great black hole, Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, of all types of social class, age and background. Peasants in rural areas, workers without studies, housewives. But also businessmen, opinion leaders, mosque imams, musicians and writers, academics. Organizations such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch denounce that it may be enough to receive calls from abroad, not use a mobile phone or wear a beard to be suspicious and end up in one of these centers.

Shahnura's family denies that his relatives did anything wrong. He believes that his maternal grandmother, a wealthy businesswoman in her 60s - no one in the family is sure of the exact age - was interned in retaliation for their exile. “It was in 2015, I was twelve years old then. The year the Chinese government did give passports to Uyghurs (although China maintains a tough policy of granting passports to Uyghurs, for reasons that have never been clarified, the provincial authorities relaxed those measures for a few months in 2015) ”, recalls the young woman. . “We met with my aunt and my grandmother in Istanbul for two days. The only time I've seen them. They got a passport and traveled abroad for the first time. My mother had not seen my grandmother in 17 years ”.

Her grandmother, she says, was nervous.

He told them that at his home he had had to burn his Koran and decorations with Arabic-like inscriptions.

That her son, Shahnura's uncle, a very religious man who had studied in Egypt, had had to stay in Xinjiang as a guarantee that they would return.

“When we returned to Germany, we called them.

My grandmother said everything was fine, but not to call her again.

And since then we could not contact again.

Nobody ever picked up the phone.

We try to get news through social networks, but neither ”-explains the young woman-.

"In November 2019 we received a message from other people: my aunt was missing, my uncle was dead and my grandmother, in a re-education camp."

Of his father's family, he says, even less is known.

That in 2013, according to his version, his uncles began to receive pressure from the authorities to convince the family in Germany to return or to collaborate with the Police.

“Then they arrested his older brother.

And we haven't heard from them anymore.

My father never wants to talk about it.

I don't know the name of my grandmother, nor the name of my cousins ​​from that branch of my family ”.

In 2019, Beijing assured that the inmates had "graduated" and the centers would be dismantled, or dedicated to other functions.

Since then, part of the nearly 385 centers that the ASPI identified in its report have been closed or converted to other functions: official buildings, Party schools or, in large cities, boarding schools for students from rural areas.

But the fields have not completely disappeared.

In its report, ASPI finds that since 2019, about 65 have expanded their facilities or are under construction, in a sign that China still retains, and plans to retain, large numbers of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

In Kashgar, one of them began construction in January 2020. The largest, with a capacity for about 10,000 inmates according to the AP news agency, is located in Dabancheng, on the outskirts of Urumqi, the capital of the autonomous region.

"What we are seeing being built now are maximum security facilities, with very high walls, turrets every hundred meters, barbed wire, while those that are being discontinued are those with low security," where the most docile inmates were housed. explains Ruser.

“Some of those who were detained in the less secure facilities have been assessed as having shown sufficient progress and have 'graduated' and left those centers.

But there are also those for whom it has been decided that they have not advanced enough and have either been transferred and formally sentenced to prison or to these high-security facilities, "adds the expert.

The threat of ending up in one of them is still there, in case of showing too much interest in religion or some other behavior that the authorities consider suspicious.

Surveillance systems, whether through cameras, mobile applications or informants, continue to be ubiquitous.

A report by the NGO Uighur Human Rights Project estimates that since 2014 more than a thousand imams and other religious personalities have been arrested for their role as community leaders or their Islamic teachings. Of them, 41% have been sent to prison, which "illustrates the intention of the Chinese Government not only to criminalize religious expression or practice, but also to consider imams criminals due to their profession," the study points out.

Other intellectual and cultural figures have also disappeared. "Comedians, folk musicians, pop musicians ... we are not talking about cultural dissent, it is anyone who has a prominent role in Uyghur culture," explains Professor Rian Thum, an expert on Uyghur culture at the China Institute at the University of Manchester. The vast majority of them continue to be held, in an uncertain situation, and the fate of some is being known only by dropper. In 2019, a video on the website of Chinese state radio confirmed that the poet and folk musician Abdurehim Heyit, known as the "king of dutar" for his mastery of this two-stringed lute, was in custody, after rumors of his death caused a harsh reaction from Turkey. Two weeks ago it was confirmed that the anthropologist Rahile Dawut,One of the world's leading experts on rural Uighur culture, she was in prison, after two years in an unknown location. The exact sentence is unknown.

The one who has returned home, although her family does not know exactly how long, is Shahnura's maternal grandmother. “Someone told us that he had heard that he was in the fields, but that he has already been able to return home. But it seems that it is not right. They tell us he has heart problems, diabetes. And mental problems. That does not remember anything. He no longer knows who he is ”.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-07-26

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