China’s Xinjiang is a ‘dystopian hellscape’ for Muslims, Amnesty report says
A damning new report has accused China of committing crimes against humanity, creating “a dystopian hellscape” for certain residents.
A damning new report has accused China of committing crimes against humanity in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, deeming it “a dystopian hellscape” for the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities who call it home.
Released on Thursday by Amnesty International, the 160-page report – based on interviews with 55 former detainees of China’s so-called “re-education” camps – found evidence the Chinese state had committed “at least the following crimes against humanity: imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; and persecution”.
The human rights organisation called on the United Nations to investigate the treatment of Uyghurs, Kazahs and other Muslims, who outside the camps are subject to mass surveillance including biometric data collection, regular searches by “ubiquitous” security officers, and “homestays” by officials.
Authorities have created “a dystopian hellscape on a staggering scale”, secretary-general of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, told the BBC.
“It should shock the conscience of humanity that massive numbers of people have been subjected to brainwashing, torture and other degrading treatment in internment camps, while millions more live in fear amid a vast surveillance apparatus,” she added.
Ms Callamard also accused her UN counterpart, Antonio Guterres, of “failing to act according to his mandate”, saying he “has not denounced the situation, he has not called for an international investigation”.
“It is incumbent on him to protect the values upon which the United Nations has been founded, and certainly not to stay silent in front of crimes against humanity,” she said.
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Millions subjected to ‘severe violence and intimidation’
Common belief among experts is that China has detained as many as a million Uyghurs and other Muslims and imprisoned hundreds of thousands more people in its crackdown in Xinjiang, which began in 2017.
Amid reports of physical and psychological torture inside the detention camps, the Chinese government has also been accused of forced abortion, sterilisation and population transfer to reduce population density and reduce birthrates of minorities, and targeting religious leaders to break religious and cultural traditions.
While China initially denied the existence of the camps, it has since defended them as a “necessary measure against terrorism” following separatist violence in the Xinjiang region.
“For a period of time, the penetration of religious extremism made implementing family planning policy in southern Xinjiang, including Kashgar and Hotan prefectures, particularly difficult,” China Daily, a publication owned by the Chinese Communist Party, wrote in regard to study findings by the Xinjiang Development Research Centre in January.
“That led to rapid population growth in those areas as some extremists incited locals to resist family planning policy, resulting in the prevalence of early marriage and bigamy, and frequent unplanned births.”
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In its report, Amnesty International said counter-terrorism could not reasonably account for mass detention, with the government’s actions displaying a “clear intent to target parts of Xinjiang’s population collectively on the basis of religion and ethnicity and to use severe violence and intimidation to root out Islamic religious beliefs and Turkic Muslim ethno cultural practices”.
Those taken to the camps, the report said, were “subjected to a ceaseless indoctrination campaign as well as physical and psychological torture”.
Torture methods, according to those the organisation interviewed, included “beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, the unlawful use of restraints (including being locked in a tiger chair – a steel chair with leg irons and handcuffs designed to shackle the body in place), sleep deprivation, being hung from a wall, being subjected to extremely cold temperatures, and solitary confinement”.
‘Like we were enemies in a war’
Detainees described being in the camps as “like we were enemies in a war”, with Amnesty International reporting that the internment camp detention process “appears to be operating outside the scope of the Chinese criminal justice system or other domestic law”.
Many of those who had been put in detention told the organisation it wasn’t for a specific act – rather, they were informed they had been detained because they’d been classified as “suspicious” or “untrustworthy”; a “terrorist” or an “extremist”.
“Two guards took me from the cell and dropped me off [at the room where I was interrogated],” Mansur, a farmer, told Amnesty International.
“Two men were inside … If I told them I had been praying, I had heard that I would get sentenced for 20 or 25 years. So I told them I never prayed. Then they became upset … they hit me with a chair until it broke … I fell to the floor. I almost fainted … Then they put me on the chair again. They said, ‘this guy hasn’t changed yet, he needs to stay [in the camp] longer.”
Another former detainee, Madi, described witnessing the torture of a cellmate who he later learned died from the effects of the torture.
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“The police would take people out of their houses...with hands handcuffed behind them, including women...and they put black hoods on them...Nobody could resist,†a former official who participated in mass arrests in #Xinjiang said.
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) June 10, 2021
Take action: https://t.co/G7uztRSDI7 📢 pic.twitter.com/W4IpOJCHPR
“He was made to sit in a tiger chair … It was an iron chair … his arms were cuffed and chained. Legs were chained as well. His body was tied to the back of the chair … Two [cuffs] were locked around his wrists and legs … A rubber thing attached to the ribs to make the person [sit] up straight,” Madi recalled.
“At some point we could see his testicles. He would [urinate and defecate] in the chair. He was in the chair for three nights … He died after he [was taken out of the cell].”
While the EU, US, UK and Canada imposed sanctions on Chinese officials over the alleged abuses in March, the possibility of China being investigated by an international legal body is complicated by the fact that it is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the BBC reports.
Thus, it’s put outside the court’s jurisdiction and has veto power over cases taken up by the ICC – which announced in December it would not pursue the case.
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