It is one of the biggest human rights stories on the planet: China, specifically Xinjiang Province, and the estimated one million Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities currently in massive internment camps there.
Previously, most of what the world knew about Xinjiang came from satellite images, carefully controlled official tours of the camps plus the accounts of some of those imprisoned there.
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These new documents expel the CCP's narrative from water. You can't deny more, you don't hide anymore. Basically, the game of the Beijing propaganda games in Xinjiang is over. |
Now, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the New York Times say they have treasures of classified documents to work with, reportedly leaked from the Chinese Communist Party.
Both organizations say the documents prove that the camps are not to "re-educate extremists,quot; or to combat violence, as Beijing would make the world believe, but to imprison and indiscriminately wash the Muslim population of Xinjiang.
In response, China borrowed one or two sentences from the coast, calling the leaks "fabrications and false news." But as new evidence emerges, Beijing's narrative is proving increasingly difficult to defend.
The leaks represent a quantum leap in our understanding of what is being developed in Xinjiang: human rights violations on a historical scale.
"The most important of these documents is that they are evidence," says Sophie Richardson, director of China, Human Rights Watch. "You know this shows a clear intention of the world's second most powerful government to politically redesign people's thinking. What they should be taught, what they are not allowed to say, what they can no longer think. I know one thing is to read clearly dishonest propaganda that speaks of religious freedom guaranteed for everyone in Xinjiang. When you sit down and read an instruction manual from a government that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it is scary. "
Taxpayers:
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian – International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Adrian Zenz, principal member of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Nury Turkel – President and founder, Uyghur Human Rights Project
Sophie Richardson – Director of China, Human Rights Watch
Source: Al Jazeera News
