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This is a long-form piece about the ongoing detainment of Uighur Muslims in China. Oliver Lamb explores the history of Han Chinese-Uighur relations, and discusses the disturbing maltreatment of prisoners.
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“I begged them to kill me.” Such was the torture that Mihrigul Tursun reportedly endured during her three stints in the detention centres of Xinjiang, China.
Tursun was first arrested in 2015 after returning to her native China with her three young children, from whom she was separated. By the time of her release two months later she had only two children. Tursun herself had been blacklisted, so that wherever she went – a shop, a café, even a bus – she says the police observed her every step.
In 2017 she was arrested again. This time she was interrogated for four days without sleep, electrocuted and beaten. During her third detainment several months later, she shared a cell with sixty other women, of whom nine reportedly died while she was there. They were forced to take various unknown drugs which induced fainting, bleeding and loss of menstruation; made to use the toilet in front of security cameras; and forced to sing songs in praise of the Chinese Communist Party. Before Tursun was released, she had to read a statement on camera confirming her loyalty to China and denying that the authorities had tortured or even detained her. She later escaped with her children to the United States. Even now, she believes that a group of Chinese men are following her.
Tursun’s testimony is unverifiable, but other former detainees tell similar stories. Together they paint a limited picture of the secret horror unfolding in Xinjiang.
Perhaps the most alarming fact of all is that there are likely hundreds of thousands – millions, even – of people like Tursun who cannot, or dare not, speak out.
Who is in the camps?
Among the camps’ inmates are small numbers of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and others. But the vast majority, including Mihrigul Tursun, are Uighurs.
The Uighurs are a village-dwelling, Turkic-speaking, Muslim people. Despite appearing in Chinese records from as early as the third century their relationship with Beijing has been rocky. Nevertheless, most Uighurs – around twelve million – live in Xinjiang.
Why are they being detained?
In 1955, Xinjiang was made an autonomous region. In the following decades, it saw an influx of Han Chinese, who, by the end of the twentieth century, constituted two-fifths of the population. A revival of traditional Uighur culture in the 1990s provoked a crackdown by the Chinese authorities, which in turn prompted protests by the Uighurs. Matters came to a head in February 1997, when a peaceful demonstration was met with force. Officially there were nine deaths, but dissidents put the toll at over 100. After 9/11, and amid the subsequent War on Terror, China claimed that terrorists linked to al-Qaeda aimed to establish an independent Uighur state.
Uighurs also had economic grounds for grievance. Greater investment in Xinjiang since the 1990s, though leading to growth, disproportionately benefited Han Chinese.
The unrest and violence of 1997 was followed by a decade of relative peace. But tensions continued to simmer. In July 2009, they erupted into riots. The trigger was a rumour that Uighur migrant workers had sexually assaulted a Han woman in a factory in Shaoguan, a city in China’s southeast. A group of Han workers retaliated by beating Uighur colleagues, killing at least two. Over 2000 miles away, in Ürümqi, Xinjiang’s capital, Uighur students staged a demonstration, and the situation escalated into violence which killed almost 200 (mostly Han) people. In the following days, Han Chinese mobs took to the streets, seeking violent revenge against Uighurs.
The riots proved to be a turning point. Believing that all Uighurs could potentially have separatist sympathies, the Chinese government redoubled its programme of suppression and assimilation. Nevertheless, party leaders continued to believe, as they had for years, that economic growth would eventually take care of unrest.
With the ascension of Xi Jinping to the presidency in March 2013 came a change of policy. Xi’s first and thus far only visit to Xinjiang was a four-day trip in April 2014, on the final day of which two Uighur militants carried out a suicide bombing in Ürümqi that injured 80 and killed one. Around the time of the visit, Xi delivered a series of secret speeches to party officials. Four of them were among 403 pages of leaked documents published by the New York Times in November 2019. In the speeches, Xi rejects the view that economic growth would quell violence, citing the breakup of China’s former partner in Communism, the Soviet Union. He notes that the Baltic countries, despite being one of the wealthiest regions of the USSR, were the first to break free. The union’s collapse was, he says, down to ideological laxity and weak leadership.
To avoid suffering the same fate, therefore, China must turn “the weapons of the people’s democratic dictatorship” against the Uighurs, showing “absolutely no mercy.”
Xi’s thinking appears to have been influenced by events elsewhere. He claims that Uighurs who had travelled to war-torn Syria and Afghanistan might return to fight for Xinjiang’s independence. Even small attacks would harm the party’s image and undermine ethnic harmony, stability and growth.
Another possible motive is that Xinjiang is a crucial link in the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure project that was launched in 2013 and forms the centrepiece of Xi’s foreign policy.
Surveillance
Whatever his reasons, Xi was clear about what he wanted: state-of-the-art surveillance technology combined with old-school methods like neighbourhood informants. That was what he got. Xinjiang today is among the most draconian, most comprehensive police states ever constructed. At all times you are watched by facial-recognition cameras. Police checkpoints are placed every hundred metres or so. Less conspicuously, the ‘Physicals for All’ programme coercively collects citizens’ biometric data – their fingerprints, iris scans, head profiles, voice recordings and even blood. According to Xinhua, a state media outlet, 36 million participated in the programme in 2016-17 alone.
This is supplemented by information from Uighurs’ own neighbours, who are encouraged to report suspicious behaviour. This might be anything from not using the front door to using an unusual amount of electricity.
All this data and more is collected in a vast database called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform. Artificial intelligence then creates lists of suspicious individuals, who can be set to trigger an alarm when they pass through checkpoints. Even Uighurs outside Xinjiang are not safe. Officials monitor expatriates, many of whom face arrest should they return to China.
The might of this surveillance state is concentrated exclusively on Uighurs. Han Chinese do not participate in the ‘Physicals for All’ programme, and they are allowed to pass through ‘green channels’ at the checkpoints.
Assimilation
As well as suppressing the Uighur people, Xi wanted to stifle and dilute their culture. He and other leaders ordered a paramilitary organisation called the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to accelerate the settlement of Han Chinese in the region. Since 2014, the Xinjiang government has created ‘unity villages’ where Han and Uighurs live side-by-side – the rationale being that ethnic mixing would dilute cultural differences. Authorities have also promoted interracial marriages.
Some trappings of Uighur culture remain. But behind the façade, a full-on assault is taking place. Cornerstones of the Islamic faith, such as the observance of Ramadan and the eating of halal food, are discouraged. Long beards and headscarves are banned. In the state-run Xinhua bookshops, shelves that were once stocked with Uighur books are empty, and the only Uighur-language volume available is a translation of Xi’s The Governance of China. Since 2017, 30% of mosques in Xinjiang have been torn down and another 30% damaged. In the city of Kashgar, once the bustling heart of Uighur culture, the streets are eerily quiet, and doors are padlocked. The main mosque is more like a museum.
Children do not escape the assimilation programme. Since the 1990s, allegedly bilingual education has in fact mainly used Mandarin, and these days only the “national language” (the term which has replaced ‘Mandarin’ in official parlance) is allowed. Textbooks have been rewritten. Young Uighurs whose parents have been detained are sent to state-run orphanages; in this way they are insulated from their culture from an early age.
In another programme that began in 2014, more than a million Han Chinese have been enlisted to move into Uighur homes. Assuming the role of the hosts' older siblings, they map out a daily schedule: a flag-raising ceremony outside the local Communist Party office in the morning, and classes on Xi’s vision for a ‘New China’ in the evening. In between, they insist that Mandarin is spoken and Chinese calligraphy practised. Meanwhile, they note down any behaviour that might indicate an ‘extreme’ attachment to Islam. Owning a Qur’an, praying on Fridays, or fasting during Ramadan – the practices of any reasonably faithful Muslim – is considered suspicious. The visitors receive instructions on how to get the hosts to let their guard down, but there are ways to unmask Uighurs who are shrewd enough to present a patriotic front that conceals their true allegiance. A pious Muslim, for example, must refuse an offer of cigarettes or alcohol.
When everything has been considered, the Han visitor makes a recommendation about whether their hosts should be allowed to stay, or whether they should be sent to a camp for re-education.
What goes on in the camps?
Nowhere in the four secret speeches that were leaked does Xi call for camps of the kind that exist today. The closest he comes is supporting an intensification of indoctrination programmes in prisons. Yet, by the end of 2014, facilities had opened across Xinjiang, each one holding dozens to hundreds of Uighurs at a time for sessions that pressured them to renounce Islam and profess gratitude to the Communist Party.
Under Chen Quanguo, the party chief for Xinjiang since August 2016, the indoctrination programme expanded dramatically. It was in the spring of 2017 that he and other leaders settled on plans to detain Uighurs en masse. Authorities were to “round up everyone who should be rounded up”: that meant anyone who might hold religiously extreme or anti-government beliefs. Again, the list of “symptoms” drawn up by officials includes perfectly ordinary Muslim behaviours such as wearing a long beard, giving up drinking or smoking, praying outside mosques and studying Arabic. Even people who did not fit those criteria but were part of the Uighur intellectual class – doctors, scientists, artists – were potential targets.
The number of Uighurs and other groups currently imprisoned in the camps, let alone the total number who have been detained, is unknown. However, it is believed to be a million or more. Analysis of satellite images from 2018 suggests that the Dabancheng camp alone might have the capacity to hold up to 130,000 people.
Journalists have tried to get to the camps; often, when they approach, they are turned back on spurious grounds, such as that a driving test is taking place. If you managed to bypass that, you would see a large compound ringed by razor wire and watchtowers – a grim premonition of what lies inside.
Former prisoners describe a programme of brainwashing. They were reportedly forced to disavow Islam and pledge loyalty to the Communist Party, sing patriotic songs, learn Mandarin, recite laws banning certain religious practices. According to leaked documents published in November 2019 (separate from the aforementioned 403-page leak), this curriculum is designed to “promote repentance and confession”.
Discipline is strict. Everything from detainees’ bed position to their seat in the classroom to their position in queues is fixed. There are fixed procedures for all daily activities down to going to the toilet, eating, and closing doors.
Some former inmates recall torture and days-long interrogations during which they were deprived of sleep. Women have said they were sexually assaulted.
Ablet Tursun Tohti recounts being woken an hour before sunrise and given a minute to get to the exercise yard, where he and his fellow inmates were forced to run. Those who did not run fast enough were taken to a special room for punishment. In one such session, recalls another detainee, an official’s car entered the camp. A small child ran through the briefly open gate and his weeping mother embraced him, before the child was dragged away by a policeman.
Forced labour and ethnic cleansing
It is also becoming increasingly clear that the camps form part of an enormous system of forced labour that is inseparable from Xinjiang’s regular economy. It has been estimated that at least 80,000 Uighurs – probably more – have been transferred to factories across China. Of particular concern is in the fabric industry. Perhaps one in five cotton items sold globally originate in Xinjiang, meaning that a huge number of companies and consumers are tainted by Uighur forced labour.
Among the most horrifying stories to emerge from the camps and the wider crackdown are those of forced contraception, abortion, sterilisation and removal of wombs. A Uighur doctor tells of going from village to village and performing these procedures – she claims to have participated in at least 500-600 of them – on women who had been rounded up. Babies born alive were killed by injection. That doctor has since fled to Turkey, where, in atonement for her past, she treats exiled Uighur women who have undergone the kind of operation she once carried out.
Her claim that the Chinese government is pursuing a policy of systematic ethnic cleansing tallies with the facts. In Xinjiang, in 2014, just over 200,000 intrauterine devices (T-shaped inserts meant to prevent pregnancy) were fitted; by 2018 that figure had grown to nearly 330,000. Between 2016 and 2018 the number of sterilisation procedures in Xinjiang rose sevenfold to 60,000. Meanwhile, IUD use and sterilisations in the rest of China fell.
The country has recent experience with population control, having operated a one-child policy between 1980 and 2016. That rule was often applied more laxly to minorities than to Han Chinese. Now, however, the limit is set at two children for all families (or three in rural areas) – and Han women rarely suffered the cruelty to which Uighurs are subjected. Armed police search Uighur homes for concealed children. Parents found to have broken the law are sent to detention camps unless they can pay a heavy fine. In the camps, women are force-fed pills or injected with fluids, with side-effects ranging from dizziness to loss of menstruation. They are also forced to attend lectures on family planning.
As a result of this campaign, the birth rate in Xinjiang plunged by 24% in 2019 alone. From 2015 to 2018 birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar dropped by over 60%. Some experts believe this constitutes a demographic genocide.
Claims of genocide
Dr Erkin Sidick, the President of the Uyghur Projects Foundation and a senior advisor to the World Uyghur Congress, believes that Western media reports are two years behind reality. He says that China plans to kill a third of the Uighur population, detain a third, and indoctrinate the rest into Communist Party ideology. This process may already be well underway. Based on population growth rates, he estimates that the Uighur population in 2016 was around 18 million – six million higher than the official figure. He cites the example of a county which was reportedly home to 92,000 Uighurs in 2016 but only 20,000 today. If these claims are true then a silent, invisible genocide of unthinkable magnitude is currently taking place in China.
Sidick insists that his information came from trusted officials and civil servants. Even so, what he says should be treated with extreme caution, since it has not been independently corroborated. Sidick himself acknowledges the possibility that the leaks were an attempt to discredit the Western media by feeding them falsehoods.
Has there been any opposition?
Not all Chinese officials supported the crackdown. Some feared it would worsen ethnic tensions and hinder economic growth. They, however, have fallen foul of Chen Quanguo’s ruthless purge. Secret teams of investigators travelled across Xinjiang in search of local leaders who opposed the crackdown or failed to carry it out with sufficient zeal; in 2017 alone more than 12,000 investigations were opened. One local leader – Wang Yongzhi of Yarkand County – who quietly released over 7000 detainees was jailed and portrayed in state media as irredeemably corrupt.
Foreign governments and human rights groups, too, have strongly condemned the camps. In October 2019, the United States imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials involved in the crackdown and sanctioned dozens of guilty companies and government agencies. At the UN General Assembly in September 2020, 39 countries condemned China’s policies towards Uighurs.
45 countries, however, defended China. Surprisingly, most Muslim-majority nations have remained silent on the issue, possibly prioritising their their economic and strategic relationships with China over more high-handed concerns.
Activists and governments have in recent months pressured firms operating in Xinjiang to expunge forced labour from their supply chains. In September 2020, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favour of legislation to that effect. But supply chains are complex – especially in China, where ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is the norm – and it is often impossible to guarantee that every aspect is ethically unobjectionable, unless one is willing to leave Xinjiang entirely. That would be expensive and disruptive.
For Gulnar Omirzakh, these questions are not academic. Though she now lives with her husband and children in Kazakhstan, the IUD that was inserted into her still causes sharp pain. “When I think of the word ‘Xinjiang’,” she says, “I can still feel that fear.”