Uyghur detention: Leaked files reveal locations of lost loved ones

 

A huge collection of data, which are linked to China's treatment of Uyghurs and other minorities, has been handed to the BBC.

The cache reveals, in unprecedented detail, China’s use of “re-education” camps and formal prisons as two separate but related systems of mass detention for Uyghurs. They also include information on missing people, seen for the first time by their family members.

China's secret internment camps

China has been quietly detaining its population of Uighurs, the country’s Muslim minority, in internment camps. First-hand accounts from inside the camps paint a brutal picture of torture and political indoctrination. At first, China denied the existence of these camps and tried to cover them up. But as a network of academics and activists uncovered evidence of the camps' locations, and the reality of what’s going on inside, China changed its story.

From denial to pride: how China changed its language on Xinjiang's camps

After Joseph Stalin created show trials and the gulag which persisted in the former Soviet Union until his death. At least where show trials are concerned. While the gulag system continued while not quite as draconian even today under Putin.  China has decided to reinvent that system and seems quite proud of the whole horrible system.  They have even brought back reeducation camps just to complete the triumphant.

China’s state broadcaster CCTV last week offered a look inside Xinjiang’s controversial internment camps.

In the 15-minute segment journalists visit the Hotan City Vocational Skills Education and Training Centre where they teach students Mandarin, China’s various legal codes, and job-relevant skills, according to a city official, reciting almost verbatim a description previously given in Chinese state media.

Students are shown learning cosmetology, baking, sewing, woodworking and more. The cafeteria is decorated with balloons and bunting, and all the dorms have air conditioning. One young woman tells an interviewer woodenly: “If I wasn’t here studying, I don’t even want to imagine where I’d be. Maybe I would have followed those religious extremists into a life of crime. The government and party found me in time and saved me.”