Leaked documents reveal brainwashing in China’s prison camps
Documents challenge Beijing’s claims that the camps provide voluntary education
Leaked documents have exposed the systematic brainwashing of Muslims in China’s network of high-security prison camps.
The Guardian says the papers reveal the “largest mass incarceration of an ethnic-religious minority since the second world war” and show China is running detention camps that are secret, involuntary and used for ideological “education transformation”.
The Chinese government has long claimed the camps, in the far-western Xinjiang region, provide voluntary education and training. China's ambassador to the UK insists that the leaked documents have been fabricated.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
However, a nine-page memo by Zhu Hailun, then deputy-secretary of Xinjiang's Communist Party and the region's top security official, orders that the camps should be run as high security prisons, with strict discipline, punishments and no escapes.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that about a million people - mostly from the Muslim Uighur community - have been detained without trial.
The paperwork rules that these inmates could be held indefinitely, but must serve at least a year in the camps before they can even be considered for “completion”, or release.
Even then, captives will only be released when they can prove they have transformed their behaviour, beliefs and language.
“Promote the repentance and confession of the students for them to understand deeply the illegal, criminal and dangerous nature of their past activity,” says the document.
“For those who harbour vague understandings, negative attitudes or even feelings of resistance…carry out education transformation to ensure that results are achieved.”
Another leaked document reveals that 15,000 people from southern Xinjiang were sent to the camps over the course of just one week in 2017.
Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, told the BBC the leaked memo should be used by prosecutors.
“This is an actionable piece of evidence, documenting a gross human rights violation,” she said.
“I think it's fair to describe everyone being detained as being subject at least to psychological torture, because they literally don't know how long they're going to be there.”
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Netherlands split on WFH for sex workers
Speed Read Councils concerned over 'nuisance' of at-home sex work, but others say changes will curb underground sex trade
By Arion McNicoll, The Week UK Published
-
'He adored Trump, and then rejected him'
Today's Newspapers A roundup of the headlines from the US front pages
By The Week Staff Published
-
The Thursday Murder Club: who's in the film and what we can expect
Speed Read Author Richard Osman reveals starry cast set to play his 'septuagenarian sleuths'
By Adrienne Wyper, The Week UK Published
-
Sydney mall attacker may have targeted women
Speed Read Police commissioner says gender of victims is 'area of interest' to investigators
By Julia O'Driscoll, The Week UK Published
-
Why are kidnappings in Nigeria on the rise again?
Today's Big Question Hundreds of children and displaced people are missing as kidnap-for-ransom 'bandits' return
By Julia O'Driscoll, The Week UK Published
-
Deaths of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies hang over Sydney's Mardi Gras
The Explainer Police officer, the former partner of TV presenter victim, charged with two counts of murder after turning himself in
By Austin Chen, The Week UK Published
-
How the idyllic Galapagos Islands became staging post in world drug trade
Under the radar Ecuador's crackdown on gang violence forces drug traffickers into Pacific routes to meet cocaine demand
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Armed gangs, prison breaks and on-air hostages: how Ecuador was plunged into crisis
The Explainer Gangs launch deadly revenge after president declares state of emergency following escape of feared drug boss from prison
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Ecuador tips toward chaos amid prison breaks, armed TV takeover
Speed Read New President Daniel Noboa authorized the military to 'neutralize' powerful drug-linked gangs after they unleashed violence and terror across Ecuador
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Prague shooting: student kills 14 people at university
Speed reads Police believe suspect, who killed himself, may have shot his father before carrying out mass murder
By Arion McNicoll, The Week UK Published
-
Ex-US diplomat confessed spying for Cuba to undercover agent, FBI says
Speed Read DOJ says former US ambassador Manuel Rocha perpetrated 'one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent'
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published