{"id":1061,"date":"2018-10-15T16:05:09","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T16:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=1061"},"modified":"2018-10-15T16:05:09","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T16:05:09","slug":"the-leaders-who-unleashed-chinas-mass-detention-of-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=1061","title":{"rendered":"The Leaders Who Unleashed China\u2019s Mass Detention of Muslims"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n

BEIJING \u2014 Rukiya Maimaiti, a local propaganda official in China\u2019s far west, warned her colleagues to steel themselves for a wrenching task: detaining large numbers of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Chinese government wanted to purge the Xinjiang region of \u201cextremist\u201d ideas, she told her co-workers<\/a>, and secular Uighurs like themselves had to support the campaign for the good of their people.<\/p>\n

\u201cFully understand that this task is in order to save your relatives and your families,\u201d wrote Ms. Maimaiti, a Communist Party functionary who works on the western edge of Xinjiang, in a message that was preserved online<\/a>. \u201cThis is a special kind of education for a special time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her warning is one piece of a trail of evidence, often found on obscure government websites, that unmasks the origin of China\u2019s most sweeping internment drive since the Mao era \u2014 and establishes how President Xi Jinping<\/a> and other senior leaders played a decisive role in its rapid expansion.<\/p>\n

In a campaign that has drawn condemnation around the world, hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been held in \u201ctransformation\u201d camps across Xinjiang for weeks, months or years at a time, according to former inmates and their relatives.<\/p>\n

Beijing says the facilities provide job training and legal education for Uighurs and has denied carrying out mass detentions.<\/p>\n

But speeches, reports and other documents online offer a clearer account than previously reported of how China\u2019s top leaders set in motion and escalated the indoctrination campaign, which aims to eradicate all but the mildest expressions of Islamic faith and any yearning for an independent Uighur homeland.<\/p>\n

Mr. Xi has not publicly endorsed or commented on the camps, but he ordered a major shift in policy soon after visiting Xinjiang in 2014 to weaken Uighurs\u2019 separate identity and assimilate them into a society dominated by the Han majority, according to the documents.<\/p>\n

Later, amid official reports warning the results were insufficient, Mr. Xi reassigned Chen Quanguo<\/a>, 62, the hard-line party chief in neighboring Tibet, to act as the chief enforcer of the crackdown in Xinjiang. Mr. Chen was also promoted to the 25-member Politburo, the party leadership council that governs China.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is happening in Xinjiang is the leading edge of a new, more coercive ethnic policy under Xi Jinping\u2019s \u2018new era\u2019 of Chinese power,\u201d said James Leibold<\/a>, an expert on Xinjiang at La Trobe University in Australia who has monitored the campaign.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is weighing sanctions against Chinese officials and companies involved in the indoctrination camps, a move that would extend the friction between Washington and Beijing over trade and military disputes to human rights. A bipartisan commission has singled out Mr. Chen and six other officials<\/a> as potential targets.<\/p>\n

Last week, apparently stung by the international criticism, the Xinjiang government issued revised rules on \u201cderadicalization\u201d that for the first time clearly authorized the indoctrination camps.<\/p>\n

Worried about Muslim extremism and ethnic nationalism, Beijing has long maintained tight control of Xinjiang, where nearly half the population of 24 million are Uighurs. In the decade up to 2014, the security forces struggled with a series of violent antigovernment attacks for which they blamed Uighur separatists.<\/p>\n

Mr. Xi made his first and only visit as national leader to Xinjiang in April 2014. Hours after his four-day visit<\/a> ended, assailants used bombs and knives to kill three people<\/a> and wound nearly 80 others near a train station in Urumqi, the regional capital. The attack was seen as a rebuff to Mr. Xi, who had just left the city and vowed to wield an \u201ciron fist\u201d against Uighurs who oppose Chinese rule.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThat seems to have been taken by Xi Jinping as an affront,\u201d said Michael Clarke<\/a>, a scholar at the Australian National University who studies Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

A month later, Mr. Xi called for a vigorous push to make Uighurs loyal members of the Chinese nation through Chinese-language instruction, economic incentives and state-organized ethnic intermingling. The leadership also approved a directive<\/a> on establishing tighter control of Xinjiang that has not been made public.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrengthen public identification of every ethnic group with the great motherland, with Chinese nationhood and with Chinese culture,\u201d Mr. Xi said at a meeting on Xinjiang at the time. \u201cThere must be more ethnic contact<\/a>, exchange and blending.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the year after Mr. Xi\u2019s visit to Xinjiang, the documents show, the party began building \u201ctransformation through education\u201d camps to warn Muslim minorities of the evils of religious zealotry and ethnic separatism.<\/p>\n

The camps were relatively small back then; many detainees were held for just a few days or weeks, official speeches<\/a> and reports show<\/a>. But there were no public guidelines for how they should operate.<\/p>\n

By taking a harder line in Xinjiang, Mr. Xi effectively endorsed a group of Chinese scholars and officials advocating an overhaul of the party\u2019s longstanding policies toward ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n

For decades, the party kept Uighurs, Tibetans and other groups under tight political control while allowing some room for preserving each nationality\u2019s language, culture and religion. The mosaic approach was copied from the Soviet Union and made Xinjiang an \u201cautonomous region,\u201d where, in theory, Uighurs enjoyed greater rights and representation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n