China Didn’t Want Us to Know. Now Its Own Files Are Doing the Talking.
More disclosures reveal the full impact of the government’s repression of ethnic minorities — well beyond re-education camps.
"This Sunday, the contents of two more sets of documents — all of which I have reviewed —
are being disclosed. Among the first batch, also leaked, is a
confidential telegram signed by Zhu Hailun, Xinjiang’s deputy party
secretary, which details how local authorities should manage and operate
the “vocational skills training centers” — a euphemism for the
internment camps. (All translations here are mine.) The second set of
documents, a large cache of files and spreadsheets from local
governments, reveals the internment campaign’s devastating economic and
social impact on the families and communities it targets...
Thanks to these new document disclosures, we now have hard evidence — and the government’s own evidence — that
in addition to implementing a vast internment program in Xinjiang, the
Chinese Communist Party is deliberately breaking up families and forcing
them into poverty and a form of indentured labor. For all its efforts
at secrecy, the Chinese government can no longer hide the extent, and
the reach, of its campaign of repression in Xinjiang.
Some important elements are still unknown. The total internment figure
remains a well-guarded secret. (Based on the new evidence, I have
revised my own estimate: I think that between 900,000 and 1.8 million
people have been detained in Xinjiang since the spring of 2017.) Also
missing from the official documents that have surfaced so far are
precise records of how the detainees are treated and how, exactly, the
process of re-education works. (About those things, however, we have witness accounts.)
The confidential telegram and local files do not mention the use of
physical violence — but for one notable exception. The telegram states
that people who resist brainwashing must be singled out for
“assault-style re-education.” Yet another sinister understatement, and
it suggests that force and torture may, in fact, be widely used."
