Show ‘absolutely no mercy’ to Uighurs: China’s Xi Jinping

A rare and huge leak of Chinese documents has shed new light on a security crackdown on Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region.

Xi Jinping ordered officials to act with “absolutely no mercy” against separatism and extremism in Xinjiang. Picture: AFP

A rare and huge leak of Chinese government documents has shed new light on a security crackdown on Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region, where President Xi Jinping ordered officials to act with “absolutely no mercy” against separatism and extremism, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

Human rights groups and outside experts say more than a million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been rounded up in a network of ­internment camps across the far-western region.

The 403 pages of internal ­papers obtained by the NYT provide an unprecedented look into the communist party’s crackdown, which has come under ­increasing international criticism, especially from the US.

The documents include unpublished speeches by Mr Xi as well as directives and reports on the surveillance and control of the Uighur population, the newspaper said. The leak also suggests that there has been discontent within the party about the crackdown.

The documents were leaked by an unnamed member of the Chinese establishment who expressed hope that the disclosure would prevent the leadership, including Mr Xi, from “escaping culpability for the mass detentions”, the NYT said.

In a 2014 speech to officials made after militants from the ­Uighur minority killed 31 people in a train station in southwestern China, Mr Xi called for an all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” using the “organs of dictatorship”, and showing “absolutely no mercy”, according to the daily.

The internment camps expanded rapidly following the appointment in 2016 of a new party chief in Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo. Mr Chen , according to the NYT, distributed Mr Xi’s speeches to justify the crackdown and urged officials to “round up everyone who should be rounded up”.

The trove of leaked documents included a guide to ­answering questions from students who had returned home to Xinjiang to find their families missing or detained in camps. ­Officials were instructed to say the students’ family members had been infected with the “virus” of extremist thinking and needed to be treated before “a small ­illness becomes a serious one”.

The documents also shed light on the party’s punishment of one official, Wang Yongzhi, who was investigated from 2017 to 2018 for disobeying party orders. Mr Wang released on his own initiative more than 7000 people from camps in Xinjiang, and feared that “rounding up so many people would knowingly fan conflict and deepen resentment”, ­according to a confession by Mr Wang leaked to the NYT.

China, after denying the camps, has described them as vocational schools aimed at dampening the allure of Islamist extremism and violence through education and job training. But rights groups and foreign media say official documents and satellite images show the camps are equipped and run like prisons.

AFP