Chapter 13 The Suppression of Xinjiang (1)

Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, his hard-line crackdown on Uighurs in Xinjiang escalated and so Uighurs resisted with the violent attack at Kunming Railway Station on March 1, 2014 in which 31 Uighurs were hacked to death, shocking the nation. Following the incident, Xi Jinping visited Xinjiang from April 27-30 and deployed a tougher crackdown, calling for a comprehensive push to “fight against terror, infiltration and division” and to “show no mercy” and “arrest everyone who should be arrested. No one should be spared.” On the last day of Xi’s visit, another violent attack took place at the Urumqi train station. After Xi’s departure, another terrorist incident occurred at the Urumqi Park North Street morning market on May 22 and another terrorist attack in Sha County, Xinjiang, on July 28. The spate of violent protests shows that the more pressure on Xi Jinping’s town, the greater the resistance.

In August 2016, Xi Jinping transferred his close associate Chen Guoduo to be the king of Xinjiang and Chen Guoduo increased repressive measures across the board, including the widespread establishment of “re-education camps” throughout Xinjiang. The so-called “re-education camps” are detention camps where the CCP forces extrajudicial detention. People there lose personal freedom, are put into forced labor, are forced to ideological reform, are denied freedom of religion and have physical abuse and punishment. After Chen Quanguo arrived in Xinjiang, more than 30,000 police officers were added, 7,300 security checkpoints were set up throughout Xinjiang and tens of thousands of “convenient police stations” were set up in the streets and alleys of all counties. There were 949 in Urumqi alone, with 90,000 co-police officers at these stations to deal specifically with Uyghurs. The number of people jumped seven times more than in 2016. In total, Xinjiang accounts for 1.5% of the country’s population but the number of people detained in Xinjiang in 2017 accounted for 21% of the country’s total detentions.

How many “re-education camps” are there in Xinjiang? In April 2018, Radio Free Asia interviewed at least eight “re-education camps” in Yecheng County, Kashgar, and May 2018 Jamestown Foundation Releases Solicitation Information for 73 “Re-Education Camps” in Xinjiang. In May 2019, Canadian scholar Zhang Shao of Columbia University used government information and earth imagery records to document 66 “re-education camp” locations. In September 2020, the Australian International Network Center had a database of concentration camps using satellite technology to show that there were more than 380 suspected camps in the Xinjiang region with at least 61 “re-education camps” were in fact internment camps with armed guards at the gates, high walls, iron fences and watchtowers and were not freely accessible.

How many people have been detained in Xinjiang’s “re-education camps”? The Chinese Communist Party never announces. But on August 10, 2018, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has stated that it has credible information that the Chinese Communist Party is secretly imprisoning one million Uighurs in Xinjiang and that another two million are being forced into “re-education camps”.

The U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report has stated in 2019, the U.S. estimates that Xinjiang re-education camps hold more than one million members of the Uighur, Kazakh, Hui and other Muslims as well as some Uighur Christians.

In 2019, a German anthropologist Adrian Zenginz estimated that the people in re-education camps could be as high as 1.5 million people.

On September 13, 2018, Radio Free Asia reported that Xinjiang Normal University President Azati Sulitan, Xinjiang University Professor Raiyla Daouti, Professor Abdul Karim Rehman, Professor Arslan Abdullah and Professor Gayeti Osman were sent to “re-education camps” located at Xinjiang University.

In January 2019, the New York Times reported that more than 100 Uyghur scholars, professors, university presidents, writers and poets had not been heard since their detention and imprisonment in late 2017 according to a list assembled by Xinjiang exiles. Among them was the well-known anthropologist Riyla Daouti, who was studying Islamic sacred sites, folklore, and folk songs.

The June 2019 Uyghur Human Rights Report counted at least 386 Uyghur intellectuals were detained and missing. Among them was the writer Nur Muhammad Tohti who was reportedly dead.