Data leak reveals how China 'brainwashes' Uighurs in prison camps

The Chinese government has consistently claimed the camps in the far western Xinjiang region offer voluntary education and training.

But official documents, seen by BBC Panorama, show how inmates are locked up, indoctrinated and punished.

China's UK ambassador dismissed the documents as fake news.

The leak was made to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which has worked with 17 media partners, including BBC Panorama and The Guardian newspaper in the UK.

About a million people - mostly from the Muslim Uighur community - are thought to have been detained without trial.

• 'I spent seven days of hell in Chinese camps'
• The leading Uighur geographer who vanished in China

BBC Our World 2019 Inside Chinas Camps

The Xinjiang re-education camps, officially called Vocational Education and Training Centers by the government of the People's Republic of China,^[6][7][8] are concentration camps^[4][9][10] that have been operated by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional government for the purpose of interning Uyghur Muslims since 2014.^[1][11] The camps were established under General Secretary Xi Jinping’s administration.^[11][12] They have significantly expanded since a hardline party secretary, Chen Quanguo, took charge of the region in August 2016. These camps are reportedly operated outside of the legal system; many Uyghurs have reportedly been interned without trial and no charges have been levied against them.^[2][13][14] Local authorities are reportedly holding hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and Muslims from other ethnic minorities in these camps, for the stated purpose of countering extremism and terrorism.^{[15][16][17][18][19]}

A behind the scenes tour of the Guantánamo Bay library – video

Guardian US correspondent David Smith was granted a tour of Guantánamo Bay prison, and a peek inside the library shows about 35,000 items available for inmates, from Harry Potter novels (very popular) to men’s health and fitness magazines, to a scratched-out copy of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope

Park Yeon-mi has become an outspoken critic of the country she escaped at 13.

This from a live Q and A she did with the Guardian:

It’s time to wrap up. Thank you to everyone for the questions. Apologies we couldn’t get to them all, but I think we covered most of the bases. Here’s a parting note from Park Yeon-mi:

When I was four years old, my mum told me not to even whisper. Even the birds and mice could hear me. Even in China I had to hide. My whole life I had to hide. I hid my opinions and could not express anything.
Everyone participating in this conversation have given me a platform to express my voice. Thank you for listening and giving me this opportunity. I hope we can have more of these conversations.

neddles

29 October 2014 12:40pm

This comment has been chosen by Guardian staff because it contributes to the debate

What would you say is the one aspect of life in North Korea that you think foreigners from outside the country don't know about or understand, even if they read about North Korea a lot?

As a North Korean myself, I can’t even describe it honestly to you, so how can we expect the media to give the whole picture? The day North Korea opens their door and lets people free, we will understand them fully. Hopefully it won’t be too late for them.

Das Wunderkind

29 October 2014 1:43pm

This comment has been chosen by Guardian staff because it contributes to the debate

How was sport regarded in North Korea? Was it openly enjoyed or a tool of social control?
How were North Korea's international sporting achievements, real or otherwise, presented to the population?

When people win, they have to say a speech, and talk about how their success comes from King Jong-un. Nothing escapes the regime. If you lose, you can be punished, or even sent to jail. Sport just becomes propaganda.

Prison camp escapee: North Korea won't change its repressive ways

Editor's note: Shin Dong-hyuk is a human rights advocate and subject of the best-seller "Escape From Camp 14," which tells his story about being born and raised in a brutal political prison camp in North Korea. Shin is the only man known to have been born in and to have escaped such a facility. He's the founder and executive director of the group, Inside NK where he raises awareness about North Korea's human rights abuses. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

It maintains this position even though I was born in the most infamous, political prison camp in North Korea: Camp 14. Even now, there are people who are born into a life of an inmate in a political prison camp.

READ: 'Escape from Camp 14,' a survival story

North Korea also denies committing human rights violations, threatens and intimidates defector activists working to raise awareness of human rights issues, and attacking and criticizing those who have testified during the United Nations Commission of Inquiry's investigation, calling these defectors "human scum."

READ: Defectors describe horror, heartbreak of labor camps

Only recently did they concede that "labor detention centers" exist, but solely for the incarcerated to have their lives improved "through their mentality and to look on their wrongdoings."

Earlier this year, the UN published a report on the human rights situation in North Korea, through the Commission of Inquiry that was established last year.

It was followed by a special North Korean human rights side event during the recent UN General Assembly in New York in which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the newly appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, and the Foreign Ministers of Japan and South Korea demanded improvements in North Korea's human rights record.

North Korean defectors 'promised apartments and jobs if they return'

You bet. just come on home and we'll insure that living in a utopian paradise is our ultamite goal.   What they're really saying is yea come back to our socialist playground  that jail cell and torture regemine is waiting for you and your entire extended family.  You'll live for how long who knows, but living that prsion alive isn't an option.

Sources inside the country say many are skeptical about the regime's offer, and that the jobs may be little more than re-education through labour. Daily NK reports

"Even though you betrayed the Motherland, your hometown, your parents, brothers and sisters, were you to return to the Motherland then not only would you be forgiven; you would also be provided with an apartment and a job to encourage you to work hard. These are the wishes of our General," the source, from North Hamkyung province, quoted the lecturer as saying.

If escaping famine and poverty for a better life in the South is a betrayal of the motherland so be.

Some people who have returned from South Korea to Hyesan in Yangkang and Yeonsa County in North Hamkyung have reportedly been given apartments. However, they have also reportedly been allocated work in mines and on farms, causing local people to suggest that they are actually being “revolutionised”.

Some people who have returned from South Korea have reportedly been allocated work in mines and on farms, causing local people to suggest that they are actually being 'revolutionised'

The term “revolutionised” means that since they are deemed to have acted against the policies, orders, and line of the ruling Party, they are in need of re-education through hard labour and additional ideological indoctrination.

Kim Rounds Up The Relatives

In North Korea its normal practice for the relatives of a person convicted of crimes against the state to arrested and imprisoned in the North's vast network of prison camps.  That seems to happening to the relatives Jong-Song theak the uncle of Kim-Jong un who was arrested and executed a little over a week ago.

More than a hundred relations of Jang Song-thaek, who was executed by firing squad on charges of plotting to overthrow the North Korean state, have reportedly been arrested and sent to prison camps.

Security officials are said to have descended on a suburb of Pyongyang, the capital, to round up family members of Jang, who was uncle by marriage to Kim Jong-un, the reclusive state's leader.

"At around 10pm on the night of [December] 13, the day after Jang was executed, armed men from the Ministry of State Security arrived in the Pyongchon area of Pyongyang, where a lot of his relations lived," a source in the North Korean capital told the Daily NK news website, which is run by defectors based in South Korea. "They took away a few hundred people. It was not just his close relations, but distant members of his family too, like relations of his father. In these circumstances, even his relations outside Pyongyang are not safe."

North Korea's Gulag System Continues to Grow Apace

With a change in leadership and given North Korea's dire economic straits one might have believed that Kim-Jong un would turn away from isolation and open up North Korea to the outside world.  Not enough to threaten its dynastic dictatorship but enough to show improved living standards for its population.  Instead just the opposite seems to be happening with a reported increase not only the size   of the camps but evidence shows that the government is constructing more of them.

North Korea is showing no signs of scaling back its fearsome labor camp system, with torture, starvation, rape and death a fact of life for tens of thousand of inmates, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

The rights group released satellite images, purportedly showing evidence of expansion, including the construction of new housing blocks and production facilities, at two of the isolated regime's largest camps or "kwanliso" --15 and 16 -- used to hold political prisoners.

Horrific conditions

Camp 16, which is located near Hwaseong in North Hamgyong province, housed an estimated 20,000 people, according to previous analysis by Amnesty in 2011. But the group claims the latest images, taken in May this year, indicate a slight increase in population with the new housing blocks clearly visible. They also appear to show significant economic activity -- including mining, logging and agriculture.

Amnesty said the camp covered an area of around 216 square miles (560 square km), or three times the size of America's capital, Washington DC.

Camp 15, also known as Yodok, is located in the river valleys of central North Korea just 75 miles (120km) from the capital Pyongyang. In 2011, Amnesty reported that around 50,000 people were imprisoned there, though it said 39 housing blocks have since been demolished with only six new blocks built. While Amnesty conceded this might indicate a reduction in prisoner numbers, it said significant industrial activity was visible in the area, including logging.

Google Maps Show North Korean Prison Camps

Earlier this month Google executive Eric Schmidt embarked on a journey to North Korea, one of the world's most secretive and Internet-restrictive countries. While the U.S. State Department publicly criticized Schmidt's timing and intentions, human rights activists have seen the visit as a reminder of something significant. As Irish outlet RTE News reports, many believe that Google Earth is invaluable in revealing evidence of North Korea's system of prison and labor camps, which are said to number in the dozens. Human rights groups estimate that upwards of 250,000 political prisoners suffer through starvation and intense manual labor in these camps, with blogs like One Free Korea compiling everything we know about these locations. Managed by Washington lawyer and North Korea activist Joshua Stanton, the blog details six prison camps -- three of which Stanton uncovered. One of these camps is Camp 22, which can be seen on Google Maps below.