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HONG KONG – China will release Muslim detainees held in the far west of Xinjiang after completing their "education in extremization" by the end of the year, a regional leader said Tuesday. as part of the defense of its most comprehensive mass internment program to date.
Shohrat Zakir, head of the de facto second instance of Xinjiang, described the detention program as an effort to provide legal education and professional training to "men" facilities in a region marked by poverty and religious fundamentalism.
Western governments and human rights groups, as well as a panel of the United Nations, estimate that China has detained up to one million people – almost all belonging to minorities Muslims – in a secret network of re-education centers operating outside Chinese courts. . An increasing number of first-person testimonies in the centers, supported by satellite images and documents and reports from the Chinese government, have painted a picture of grueling facilities that ostensibly offer training courses but erase the sense of identity religious and ethnic detainees by force. repetition, confessions and exercises.
Although various Chinese government officials have previously issued unequal program defenses or denied their existence, Beijing has made a concerted effort in recent weeks to assert its point of view: the facilities provide a light but necessary education to guide the people of the country. Xinjiang, which has at least 10 million Muslims in an area half of India, far from extremist ideology.
"Through education and vocational training, Xinjiang's social environment has undergone significant changes, with a healthy atmosphere rising and inappropriate practices in decline," said Zakir, himself a member of the ethnic minority. Muslim Uyghur who a majority of the detainees.
Over the last decade, Xinjiang, a vast territory bordering Central Asia and other parts of China, has been the victim of a series of attacks, including bombings and massacres at the border. blade of a knife, attributable to extremist Uyghur leaders. And between 2013 and 2015, militant groups based in Syria used messaging apps to entice hundreds, possibly thousands of men, women, and children to flee the suffocating security environment from Xinjiang to the Middle East.
[U.S. lawmakers urge FBI to probe Chinese intimidation against immigrants]
Chinese authorities responded with unprecedented repression involving sophisticated digital surveillance and a sprawling re-education effort, sweeping away Muslim residents who maintain contact with relatives abroad, studying in Islamic schools known as madrassas abroad or simply keep habits such as praying regularly or growing a beard. These measures are extremely disproportionate to the terrorist threat facing China and could exacerbate violent extremism, warned international rights groups and officials of the US State Department.
It is thought that a large number of people have been swept away since the proliferation of centers in 2017, and relatively few have emerged. Zakir said Tuesday that this may change once some students have completed their training, although he has not given details on the number of detainees who could be released – nor on the number of those who are detained.
He acknowledged, however, that some of those detained had simply been "influenced" by extremism and did not commit crimes. These detainees receive lenient treatment that includes mandarin, clothing and electronics assembly, he said, which is an apparent counterpoint to criticism of the arbitrariness and extrajudicial nature of mass detentions.
Zakir denied any ill-treatment of the detainees, describing them as released in a setting where radio, television, sports, dance and singing can be enjoyed by those who were previously under the influence of the fundamentalist religion.
"Now they understand that life can be so colorful," he added.
Maya Wang, a Chinese researcher at Human Rights Watch who has published extensively on Xinjiang's re-education centers, said China's argument that the reeducation system is designed for the benefit of those incarcerated in 39 "is only used to deprive detainees of the basic procedural safeguards available in the Chinese criminal justice system, such as access to a lawyer."
"The speech is addressing the international community in response to an avalanche of international reporting and condemnation of Xinjiang political education camps and a high level of repression," Wang said. "The clumsy justifications of the Xinjiang authorities for these camps only illustrate what the" rule of law "in China means – that the [Communist] The party bends to its will and uses it as a weapon against alleged political enemies, whether they be human rights activists, minorities or political rivals. "
Zakir's comments appeared to be aimed at refuting allegations of human rights violations of the detention program – and critics of his lack of grounding in Chinese law – as Beijing prepares for an annual meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The remarks were voiced a few days after the Xinjiang legislature announced a revision of its anti-extremism law, which provided local authorities with legal cover for the creation of "education and transformation organizations". .
If Xinhua's interview was deliberate in its construction, other officials and state bodies have put a sharper – and conspiratorial – tone to China's defense.
Last week, a provincial-run Xinjiang website compared Western governments who criticized Xinjiang's human rights to "strident housewives." Over the weekend, a Chinese diplomat in Islamabad publicly whipped to Hussain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, who tweeted a report on Xinjiang. The diplomat described Haqqani as corrupt and "soulless" – comments that echoed on Pakistani social media.
After Xinhua released Zakir's statements on Tuesday, Hu Xijin, an influential editor of the Global Times tabloid, said Western forces were using the Xinjiang issue to try to undermine China.
"The West simply cares about finding mistakes with China and accusing us of reprehensible acts that do not exist," he said in a video message on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site. "They put pressure on China on the world stage and tried to disrupt Xinjiang's governance. In fact, these Western forces do not care about the well-being of the people of Xinjiang. "
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