Beijing has gone on the PR offensive, in response to growing evidence that China has detained one million ethnic Muslims and put as many as two million into re-education and indoctrination training camps in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang.
This is a lengthy fact check, because the Xinjiang chairman’s claims are voluminous and, ultimately, unverifiable.
“It is safe to say that the Chinese government is starting to feel the international pressure groups generated by the human rights community and foreign governments around the world,” Francisco Bencosme, Asia Pacific Advocacy Manager at Amnesty International USA, told Polygraph.info.
Having previously denied such camps even existed, a high-ranking regional official has now rebranded the facilities as “people oriented” vocational institutes and schools.
Shohrat Zakir, chairman of the Government of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, told state-run Xinhua News Agency that the "three evil forces" of terrorism, extremism, and separatism were the driving forces for launching the “vocational education and training program.” He added that the country has spared no efforts in protecting the basic human rights of citizens from the harm of terrorism and extremism.
Zakir said the vocational education and training program is in accordance with the constitution, the regional ethnic autonomy (which entitles citizens to the right of freedom of religious belief) and the a set of official rules governing the adoption of Chinese national laws.
Zakir said vocational training had “enhanced” the sense of community of the Chinese nation, helped “trainees” master the country's common language, increased their knowledge of the rule of law, and helped trainees realize they “are firstly citizens of the nation.”
He also claimed that training had led to “notable changes” in the social environment.
Zakir said the faculties of the “institutions and schools” had done their best to “meet the trainees' needs in study, life, and entertainment on the basis of free education.”
“Faculties of the institutions and schools also try their best to ensure and meet the trainees' needs in study, life, and entertainment on the basis of free education. The cafeteria prepares nutritious free diets, and the dormitories are fully equipped with radio, TV, air conditioning, bathroom and shower. Indoor and outdoor sports venues for basketball, volleyball and table tennis have been built, along with reading rooms, computer labs, film screening rooms, as well as performance venues such as small auditoriums and open-air stages,” Zakir said.
“Various activities such as contests on speech, writing, dancing, singing and sports are organized. Many trainees have said that they were previously affected by extremist thought and had never participated in such kinds of art and sports activities, and now they have realized that life can be so colorful.”
Mental health care, access to garment making and ethnic cuisine catering courses, and a paid basic income are all purportedly on offer.
"I didn't understand the country's common language, nor did I know about the laws,” Zakir cites one trainee as allegedly saying. “I wouldn't even have known that I had made mistakes. But the government didn't give me up. It has actively saved and assisted me, giving me free food, accommodation and education. Now I have made great progress in many aspects. I will cherish this opportunity and become a person useful to the country and society."
His comments followed a statement by outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who described the reeducation camps in Xinjiang as "straight out of George Orwell."
"At least a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been imprisoned in so-called 're-education camps' in western China," her as saying at the Chiefs of Defense Conference Dinner in Washington on Tuesday, October 16. She added that detainees are "tortured ... forced to renounce their religion and to pledge allegiance to the Communist Party."
Haley’s comments echoed similar sentiments expressed by a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Gay McDougall, who said Beijing had "turned the Uighur autonomous region into something a massive internment camp."
Gay and other rights experts expressed alarm over “credible reports” that China one million people in counter-extremism centers and forced another two million into “re-education camps for political and cultural indoctrination.”