The denials of the Chinese Communist Party, and its apologists in leading circles in Ireland and elsewhere, regarding the treatment of the Uyghur people have been forensically exposed by a cache of police files from Xinjiang.
The decrypted files, dating from the 2000s up to 2018, contain thousands of images of detainees and documents – including an authorization to shoot to kill anyone suspected of attempting to escape. There are also speeches and statements from leading Communist Party officials setting out the official policy of mass repression and terror.
The documents were passed to Dr. Adrian Zenz who is regarded as one of the foremost authorities on the repression taking place in the north western region of Xinjiang. His research has been key to heightening awareness of what is taking place there, and led the Chinese authorities to ban him from entering the country.
One of the most startling statistics to emerge from the extremely detailed data, including spreadsheets containing the names and addresses and “offences” of the detainees – some of them children – is that in Shufu county in 2017 and 2018 that 22,762 adults were being held in the camps and “schools.”
That amounts to around 12% of the population which if extrapolated to the entire region would mean that more than 1,200,000 adults are or have been in the camps. That correlates closely with Zenz’s estimates of between 12.3% and 12.7% of the population. The spreadsheets from Konasheher contain information on 286,000 people, virtually the entre population of that county in 2018.
Zehz’s report on the documents, and access to the documents themselves, can be found at View of The Xinjiang Police Files (univie.ac.at) The transcribed speeches and statements from Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party Secretary of Xinjiang and member of the Politburo, demonstrate beyond a shadow of doubt the Party leadership’s intent to implement the policy. Chen even devotes considerable time to ordering how detainees ought to be arrested, shackled and shot if necessary.
Some of the reasons for detention demonstrate just how sweeping the category of “disturbing the social order” is. People have been interned for not topping up their phone credit – presumably denying the state the ability to track them; for reading forbidden books including Islamic texts, having one too many children, or just being part of a family categorised as a subversive “type.”
There is little really to be added to Zenz’s report and to the images contained in the police files, and the other documentation.
Questions do, however, need to be posed to those in our own country who think that it is alright to be friends with the people responsible. Is turning a few bob in China or through China any more justifiable than when people were business partners and apologists for Stalin and Hitler? This is especially true when some of the same people here are currently jockeying a variety of high horses on human rights.
Shame on them.