Xinjiang internment camps

The Xinjiang internment camps are internment camps operated by the government of Xinjiang and the Chinese Communist Party Provincial Standing Committee. Human Rights Watch says that they have been used to indoctrinate Uyghurs since 2017 as part of a "Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism", a policy announced in 2014 after the May 2014 Ürümqi attack. Xinjiang internment camps have been described as "the most extreme example of China's inhumane policies against Uighurs". They were established as what are officially called vocational education and training centers by the government of the People's Republic of China. According to researcher Adrian Zenz, mass internments peaked in 2018 and have abated somewhat since then, with officials shifting focus towards forced labor programs. Since then, the Chinese government has claimed the centers have been closed. Individuals in the camps have been shifted into the formal penal system, with remaining camps being converted into prisons or factories using forced labor. The camps were established in 2017 by the administration of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping. Between 2017 and 2021 operations were led by CCP Politburo member and Xinjiang Party secretary Chen Quanguo. The camps are reportedly operated outside the Chinese legal system; many Uyghurs have reportedly been interned without trial and no charges have been levied against them (held in administrative detention). Local authorities are reportedly holding hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs in these camps as well as members of other ethnic minority groups in China, for the stated purpose of countering extremism and terrorism and promoting social integration. In July 2019, UN ambassadors of 37 countries, predominantly in Africa and Asia, signed a joint letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council defending China's policies in Xinjiang while 22 countries, mostly in North America and Europe, opposed them. In October 2020, 16 countries that defended China's policies in 2019 did not do so.

The internment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the camps constituted the largest-scale arbitrary detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. In 2020, it was estimated that Chinese authorities may have detained up to 1.8 million people, mostly Uyghurs but also including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians, as well as some foreign citizens including Kazakhstanis, in these secretive internment camps located throughout the region. In September 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) reported in its Xinjiang Data Project that construction of camps continued despite government claims that their function was winding down. There have been comparisons between the Xinjiang camps and the Cultural Revolution.

Background

Xinjiang conflict

Various Chinese dynasties have historically exerted various degrees of control and influence over parts of what is modern-day Xinjiang. The region came under complete Chinese rule as a result of the westward expansion of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, which also conquered Tibet and Mongolia. This conquest, which marked the beginning of Xinjiang under Qing rule, ended circa 1758. While it was nominally declared to be a part of China's core territory, it was generally seen as a distant land unto its own by the imperial court; in 1758, it was designated a penal colony and a site of exile, and as a result, it was governed as a military protectorate, not integrated as a province. After the 1928 assassination of Yang Zengxin, the governor of the semi-autonomous Kumul Khanate in east Xinjiang under the Republic of China, Jin Shuren succeeded Yang as governor of the Khanate. On the death of the Kamul Khan Maqsud Shah in 1930, Jin entirely abolished the Khanate and took control of the region as its warlord. In 1933, the breakaway First East Turkestan Republic was established in the Kumul Rebellion. In 1934, the First Turkestan Republic was conquered by warlord Sheng Shicai with the aid of the Soviet Union before Sheng reconciled with the Republic of China in 1942. In 1944, the Ili Rebellion led to the Second East Turkestan Republic with dependency on the Soviet Union for trade, arms, and "tacit consent" for its continued existence before being absorbed into the People's Republic of China in 1949. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the government sponsored a mass migration of Han Chinese to the region, policies promoting Chinese cultural unity, and policies punishing certain expressions of Uyghur identity. During this time, militant Uyghur separatist organizations with potential support from the Soviet Union emerged, with the East Turkestan People's Party being the largest in 1968. During the 1970s, the United Revolutionary Front of East Turkestan (URFET) was likely formed with Soviet assistance, and its leader later met with U.S. State Department officials in 1996. In 1997, a police roundup and execution of 30 suspected separatists during Ramadan led to large demonstrations in February 1997 that resulted in the Ghulja incident, a People's Liberation Army (PLA) crackdown that led to at least nine deaths. The Ürümqi bus bombings later that month killed nine people and injured 68 with responsibility acknowledged by Uyghur exile groups. In March 1997, a bus bomb killed two people with responsibility claimed by Uyghur radicals and the Turkey-based Organisation for East Turkistan Freedom. In July 2009, riots broke out in Xinjiang in response to a violent dispute between Uyghur and Han Chinese workers in a factory and they resulted in over 100 deaths. Following the riots, Uyghur radicals killed dozens of Chinese citizens in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016. These included the August 2009 syringe attacks, the 2011 bomb-and-knife attack in Hotan, the March 2014 knife attack in the Kunming railway station, the April 2014 bomb-and-knife attack in the Ürümqi railway station, and the May 2014 car-and-bomb attack in an Ürümqi street market. Several of the attacks were orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (formerly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement) which has been designated a terrorist organization by several countries including Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States (until 2020), in addition to the United Nations.

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