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BEIJING (R) – Rukiya Maimaiti, a local propaganda official in the far west of China, asked her colleagues to prepare for a heartbreaking task: detaining a large number of people belonging to the country. Uyghur ethnicity and other Muslim minorities.
The Chinese government wanted to purge the Xinjiang region of its "extremist" ideas, she told her colleagues, and the lay Uighurs like them had to support the campaign for the good of their people.
"Understand that this task is meant to save your loved ones and your families," Ms. Maimaiti, a Communist Party official working on the western outskirts of Xinjiang, wrote in a message preserved online. "This is a special kind of teaching for a special time."
His warning is a piece of evidence, often found on obscure government websites, which unveils the origin of China's largest internment campaign since the Mao era – and establishes how President Xi Jinping and other senior officials played a decisive role in its rapid expansion.
In a campaign that has attracted worldwide condemnation, hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been held in "transformation" camps across Xinjiang for weeks or months, according to reports. former detainees and their relatives.
Beijing said the facilities offered professional training and legal education to the Uyghurs and denied that they carried out mass detentions.
But speeches, reports and other documents online explain more clearly than before how the highest Chinese leaders set in motion and intensified the campaign of indoctrination, which aims to eradicate all expressions of the Islamic faith, except the lighter ones, and any aspiration to an independent Uighur homeland.
Xi neither endorsed nor publicly commented on the camps, but ordered a major policy change soon after his visit to Xinjiang in 2014 to weaken the distinct identity of the Uyghurs and equate them with a society dominated by the majority han, according to the documents.
Later, when official reports announced that the results were inadequate, Xi was reassigned Chen Quanguo, 62, leader of the radical party in neighboring Tibet, will be the main culprit of the repression in Xinjiang. Mr. Chen was also promoted to the Politburo, consisting of 25 members, the governing board of the party that governs China.
"What's happening in Xinjiang is at the forefront of a new, more coercive ethnic policy under Xi Jinping's" new era "of Chinese power," said James Leibold, Xinjiang University's expert at the University. from La Trobe in Australia, which followed the campaign.
The Trump administration suspects sanctions against Chinese officials and companies involved in indoctrination camps, which would prolong the friction between Washington and Beijing over commercial and military human rights disputes. A bipartisan commission chose Mr. Chen and six other officials as potential targets.
Last week, apparently struck by international criticism, the Xinjiang government issued revised rules on "de-radicalization" which, for the first time, clearly allowed indoctrination camps.
Worried about Muslim extremism and ethnic nationalism, Beijing has long maintained strict control over Xinjiang, where nearly half of the 24 million inhabitants are Uyghurs. In the decade before 2014, security forces faced a series of violent anti-government attacks for which they blamed Uyghur separatists.
Xi made his first and only visit to Xinjiang as a national leader in April 2014. A few hours after the end of his four-day visit, the attackers used bombs and knives to kill three people and injure them. another 80 near a railway station in Urumqi, the regional office Capital. The attack was perceived as a rebuff for Xi, who had just left the city and swore to brandish an "iron fist" against the Uighurs who opposed Chinese rule. .
"This seems to have been taken by Xi Jinping as an affront," said Michael Clarke, researcher at the Australian National University studying Xinjiang.
A month later, Xi called for a vigorous effort to make the Uighurs faithful to the Chinese nation through Chinese education, economic incentives and organized ethnic mingling. by the state. the The leaders also approved a directive on the establishment of stricter control of Xinjiang that was not made public.
"Strengthen the public identification of each ethnic group with the great homeland, Chinese nationality and Chinese culture," Xi said at a meeting on Xinjiang at the time. "There must be more contacts, exchanges and ethnic blends."
According to the documents, a year later, after Xi's visit to Xinjiang, the party started building "transformation through education" camps to warn Muslim minorities against the scourge of fanaticism. religion and ethnic separatism.
The camps were relatively small at the time; many detainees have been detained for a few days or even weeks, as indicated by official speeches and reports. But there was no public guidance on how they should work.
By adopting a tougher line in Xinjiang, Xi has indeed endorsed a group of scholars and Chinese officials advocating a revamp of the party's longstanding policy towards ethnic minorities.
For decades, the party has maintained strict political control over Uyghurs, Tibetans and other groups while leaving room for maneuver to preserve the language, culture and religion of each nationality. The mosaic approach was copied from the Soviet Union and made Xinjiang an "autonomous region" where, in theory, Uyghurs enjoyed increased rights and representation.
But in the 1990s, Chinese academics advising the government began to assert that these policies had contributed to the break-up of the Soviet Union by encouraging ethnic separatism. To avoid similar problems, argued China, it should adopt measures aimed at ethnic minorities into a broader national identity.
"The so-called" ethnic elites "should never have the opportunity to become the leaders of the country's division," said researcher Hu Lianhe in an article he co-wrote in 2010.
Hu is now a powerful voice-shaping policy for Xinjiang as a senior official in the Labor Department of the Front Unique, a communist party agency that claims heightened weight in the region.
It has been identified as a potential target of US sanctions. In August, he categorically denied reports of abuse in Xinjiang during a United Nations hearing. "There is no" de-Islamization "," he said.
In 2016, the Communist Party's main paper stated that the "de-radicalization" campaign was a success. Since Xi's visit to Xinjiang, no serious acts of state violence have been reported.
But the officials made very bad evaluations in smaller forums. Some said that Uyghur youth were more isolated from China than their elders; others warned that the Uyghurs who had gone to the Middle East, sometimes to fight in Syria, were bringing back extremist ideas and combat experience.
Such warnings appeared to persuade Xi and other leaders to support tougher measures. In August 2016, they brought Mr. Chen from Tibet to head Xinjiang. He became the first party leader to hold the position of leader of both territories.
In Tibet, another border region beset by ethnic conflict, Mr. Chen had expanded security forces, sent party leaders to live in villages and strengthened control of Buddhist monasteries and temples.
Less than three weeks after arriving in Xinjiang, he announced a "remobilization" plan to enhance security, citing Xi's orders.
Xinjiang officials have been asked to prepare for a multi-year offensive, according to an official report.
In March 2017, the regional government issued rules of "de-radicalization" that gave a green light to the expansion of internment camps, but without enacting a law authorizing detentions as required by the Chinese constitution. Local officials quickly began reporting an increasing number of Uighurs arrested or detained for indoctrination.
"Since the beginning of the strike in 2017, there have been many detainees, many of whom have finally been sentenced," wrote a senior official in Hotan, a region in southern Xinjiang. "The number of people sent to processing centers through education is also very high."
As camps and surveillance efforts expanded, Beijing allocated new funds to Xinjiang, where security spending nearly doubled in 2017 compared to the previous year, reaching $ 8.4 billion. dollars. according to data published earlier this year.
"The central level finally pays everything. Consent has certainly been given, "said Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology in Germany, who studied the camps.
The magnitude of the detentions across Xinjiang may have gone further than originally planned. "They had to use stations and other random places to greet people because they did not expect to have so many," said Jessica Batke, a former State Department analyst.
A broad definition of "religious extremism" – which included behavior as simple as trying to persuade people to quit alcohol and tobacco, as well as more serious transgressions – gave the authorities considerable leeway to punish Muslims even the most pious.
Local officials, like Mrs. Maimaiti, had little interest in restraining themselves; Those who were dragged into the crackdown were named and punished.
The public was asked to prepare for a long offensive, which a local official described as an "intellectual emancipation campaign". The Xinjiang government decreed at the end of last year that the security campaign would last five years before reaching "total stability".
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