Xinjiang, China: Australian think tank finds surprising rise in new Uyghur detention camps

China appeared to be expanding its network of secret detention centers in Xinjiang, where predominantly Muslim minorities are the target of a forced assimilation campaign, and more of the facilities resemble prisons, an Australian think tank found.

The Australian Institute of Strategic Policy used satellite imagery and official construction tender documents to map over 380 suspected detention centers in the remote Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, highlighting internment camps, detention centers and prisons that have been recently built or expanded since 2017.

The report is based on evidence that China has changed its policy from detaining Uighurs and other majority Muslim minorities in makeshift public buildings to constructing permanent mass detention centers.

This is despite the fact that the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported late last year that the “trainees” attending “vocational education and training centers” aimed at de-radicalizing them had “all graduated.”

The president of the regional government, Shohrat Zakir, was quoted as saying that foreign media reports of 1 million or 2 million people attending these centers were fabricated, although he did not provide figures.

The predominantly Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region have been locked up in camps as part of a government assimilation campaign launched in response to decades of sometimes violent struggle against Chinese rule.

Although officials described the camps as “boarding school” facilities designed to provide free job training, the former detainees say they were subjected to brutal conditions, political indoctrination, beatings and, at times, psychological and physical torture.

Under the assimilation campaign, the state has forced Uighurs to undergo sterilizations and abortions, an Associated Press investigation found, and in recent months has ordered them to drink traditional Chinese medicines to fight the coronavirus.

Australian Institute for Strategic Policy researcher Nathan Ruser wrote in the report released Thursday night: “Available evidence suggests that many extrajudicial detainees in Xinjiang’s vast ‘re-education’ network are now being formally charged and locked up in higher security facilities, including newly built or expanded prisons, or sent to walled factory compounds for forced labor. “

At least 61 detention sites had undergone new construction and expansion works in a year to July 2020, according to the report.

These included at least 14 facilities still under construction this year.

“Of these, about 50 percent are higher-security facilities, which may suggest a shift from lower-security ‘re-education centers’ to higher-security prison-like facilities,” wrote Ruser.

At least 70 facilities appeared to be less secure due to the removal of internal fences or perimeter walls, according to the report.

These included eight camps that showed signs of dismantling and had possibly been closed.

Of the camps stripped of security infrastructure, 90 percent were lower-security facilities, according to the report.

The expert group’s findings align with AP interviews with dozens of relatives and former detainees that indicate that many in the camps have been convicted in secret and extrajudicial trials and transferred to high-security prisons for things like having contact with people in the field. foreigner, having too many children and studying Islam.

Many others considered lower risk, such as women or the elderly, have been transferred to a form of house arrest or forced labor in factories.

– AP