{"id":845,"date":"2021-09-20T18:27:01","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T15:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/?p=845"},"modified":"2021-09-20T18:27:02","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T15:27:02","slug":"new-study-finds-high-level-government-role-in-chinas-uyghur-internment-campsnew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/new-study-finds-high-level-government-role-in-chinas-uyghur-internment-campsnew\/","title":{"rendered":"NEW STUDY FINDS HIGH-LEVEL GOVERNMENT ROLE IN CHINA\u2019S UYGHUR INTERNMENT CAMPSNEW"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

RFA<\/a>. 17 September 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Below is an article published by RFA<\/a>. Photo:Video screenshot courtesy of Uyghur Tribunal.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

China\u2019s top policy, legislative and advisory bodies were closely involved in the creation of the \u201cRe-Education Internment Campaign\u201d in Xinjiang that has sent some 1.8 million Uyghurs to detention camps and drawn genocide accusations against Beijing, according to a new report by a leading expert on the camp system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

German researcher Adrian Zenz \u2014 whose previous work has documented the existence and scope of the four-year-old internment camp system, as well as the motivation behind it \u2014 draws on previously unanalyzed central government and state media reports to connect the program to highest rungs of power in Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Documents on the drafting and approval of legislation in 2017 to set up the Uyghur internment campaign in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region demonstrate \u201cthat the framing of Xinjiang\u2019s de-extremification through re-education campaign was undertaken with the direct knowledge of leading figures in China\u2019s most powerful policy, legislative and advisory bodies,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cXUAR De-Extremification Regulation\u201d was spearheaded by three important party-state bodies: Central Committee Xinjiang Work Coordination Small Group, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People\u2019s Congress in Beijing, and the State Administration for Religious Affairs, Zenz writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two of the three institutions are directly under the third- and fourth-ranked members of the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, men who are below only CCP chief and state President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, says the report, published online Tuesday by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2019 speech by XUAR Governor Shohrat Zakir declaring the re-education campaign a success following the release of some inmates and credits Xi for \u201cinjecting strong impetus into Xinjiang Work,\u201d the report notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGeneral Secretary Xi Jinping personally went to Xinjiang to inspect and guide the work, presided over many meetings to study Xinjiang Work, delivered a series of important speeches, and issued a series of important instructions,\u201d Zakir is quoted in official documents as saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Xi\u2019s inner circle\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis effectively implicates Xi\u2019s inner circle of power in the atrocities committed in Xinjiang,\u201d Zenz writes in the report, titled \u201cEvidence of the Chinese Central Government\u2019s Knowledge of and Involvement in Xinjiang\u2019s Re-Education Internment Campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuch a direct link between the legal regulations underpinning and justifying the re-education campaign and the central government is uncommon and has until now escaped wider notice outside of China,\u201d writes Zenz, a senior fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zenz says the documents showing \u201cspecific and immediate involvement of central government institutions\u201d may inspire a re-examination of the role of Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party chief in Xinjiang, who is considered the architect of the crackdown on Uyghurs. Before he took the top post in Xinjiang in August 2016, Chen implemented heavy-handed surveillance and jailing policies in Tibet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGiven Chen\u2019s extensive expertise in previously working to suppress a major restive ethnic group in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), researchers including this author previously speculated that Chen may have both authored and implemented the re-education internment drive,\u201d Zenz writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chen, he notes, became the highest-ranking Chinese official to be sanctioned by the U.S. government in connection with rights abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in the XUAR, \u201cbut other central government figures have escaped such designations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zenz presented his latest report at the second session of the Uyghur Tribunal in London last weekend, a panel investigating whether China\u2019s treatment of its ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims constitutes genocide. The panel, which has no authority to enforce its determination expected in December, was repeatedly attacked in Chinese state media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new report is the latest of a series of his studies of Chinese measures to control and assimilate the 12 million Uyghurs of the XUAR. Based on a close reading of government documents and academic and policy debate, Zenz\u2019s research has formed the basis of genocide accusations against Beijing laid by several Western governments and legislatures, including the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His previous studies examine China\u2019s internment camps in the XUAR, the forced sterilization of detained Uyghur women, efforts to reduce population growth in the region thorough birth control and population transfer policies, and the Chinese government\u2019s \u201cpopulation optimization strategy\u201d to dilute the Uyghur majority in southern Xinjiang by raising the proportion of Han Chinese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Wall of the Disappeared\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese officials and state media have vilified Zenz for his research, calling him an \u201canti-China swindler\u201d and a \u201cfake academic with a bankrupt reputation,\u201d and accusing him of \u201cfabricating Xinjiang-related lies to smear and attack China.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government had no immediate response to Zenz\u2019s newest report. But on Sept. 9, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press conference that the researcher had \u201churled the absurd accusations of \u2018forced sterilization\u2019 and \u2018genocide\u2019 in Xinjiang in his so-called reports\u201d without \u201cbeing unable to present any solid evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March, Zenz was one of 10 Europeans and four entities hit with travel and other sanctions by China in response to European Union penalties imposes on XUAR officials for abuses of Uyghurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a speech at the two-day Central Conference on Ethnic Affairs in Beijing in late August that prompted fears of more harsh policies, Xi called for ethnic minority groups to put the interests of the nation first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[We] should hold the ground of ideology. [We] should actively and steadily address the ideological issues that involve ethnic factors, and continue to eradicate poisonous thoughts of ethnic separatism and religious extremism,\u201d Xi was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China has justified the use of re-education camps in the XUAR as a means of preventing religious extremism and terrorism among the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday, a U.S.-funded exhibition titled \u201cUyghur Voices: Human Rights Exhibition\u201d opened outside the U.N. in Geneva, highlighting the human rights violations allegedly committed by the Chinese government against Uyghurs and others in the XUAR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition focuses on the internment camps, gender-based violence, forced labor, and family separation and features a \u201cWall of the Disappeared\u201d with images of Uyghurs who are missing and believed to be held in the camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition will later move to Brussels and Berlin, according to the World Uyghur Congress, a Germany-based Uyghur advocacy group that has partnered with the U.S. missions and embassies in the three cities to organize the events<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChina has been attempting to cover up the Uyghur genocide in East Turkestan by all possible means, one of which is to have exhibitions at the UN,\u201d said WUC president Dolkun Isa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe at the World Uyghur Congress aim to counter China\u2019s propaganda and disinformation campaign at the U.N. by hosting our own exhibitions with facts and truth of Chinese atrocities,\u201d said Isa, whose mother died at 78 in a Xinjiang internment camp in May 2018 after serving a year for \u201creligious extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RFA. 17 September 2021 Below is an article published by RFA. Photo:Video screenshot courtesy of Uyghur Tribunal. China\u2019s top policy, legislative and advisory bodies were closely involved in the creation of the \u201cRe-Education Internment Campaign\u201d in Xinjiang that has sent some 1.8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":846,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions\/846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}