{"id":571,"date":"2017-10-02T11:10:05","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T11:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=571"},"modified":"2017-10-02T11:10:05","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T11:10:05","slug":"re-education-camps-in-two-xinjiang-counties-hold-thousands-of-uyghurs-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=571","title":{"rendered":"Re-Educat\u0131on Camps in Two Xinjiang Counties Hold Thousands of Uyghurs: Officials"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Shohret Hoshur \u2013 Re-education camps in two counties in northwest China\u2019s Xinjiang region, where mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghurs have protested Beijing\u2019s rule, house thousands of \u201cpolitically incorrect\u201d inmates who are rarely freed despite undergoing months of \u201ctraining,\u201d according to sources.<\/p>\n

The camps in Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining) county, in Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture, and Korla (Kuerle) city, in neighboring Bayin\u2019gholin Mongol (Bayinguoleng Menggu) Autonomous Prefecture hold at least 3,600 inmates, local officials told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service, and are labeled \u201ccareer development centers\u201d in a bid to mask their true nature, they said.<\/p>\n

Minewer Ablet, a middle school teacher in Ghulja\u2019s Turpanyuz township who was assigned to work as an assistant cadre and a Chinese instructor at Camp No. 4\u2014one of the county\u2019s five re-education camps\u2014said it was unclear exactly how many people were detained in the county camp system.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am responsible for teaching class No. 33, and I have seen on the teacher\u2019s notice board that the last class number is 44,\u201d she said of the county camps, where other courses include \u201claw, regulations, and career training.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 30 to 50 students in each class, so I estimate the total number of people who are undertaking the re-education program [across the county] to be at least 1,500.\u201d<\/p>\n

Assistant cadre Tursun Qadir, who teaches at the same camp, told RFA that of the 45 people in his class, the majority are \u201cformer criminals or suspects,\u201d including a number of Uyghurs who had served time in prison following an uprising against Chinese rule in Ghulja 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong them are a number of former prisoners who served 10-15 years in prison after being accused of involvement in the Feb. 5, 1997 Ghulja Incident,\u201d Qadir said, referring to protests sparked by reports of the execution of 30 Uyghur independence activists that were violently suppressed by authorities, leaving nine dead, according to official media, though exile groups put the number at as many as 167.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most common reason that people are brought here is that they attended [or overheard] illegal [religious] teachings,\u201d he said, adding that other detainees included \u201cmen who grew beards 10 years ago\u201d and \u201cparents who sent their children to underground religious schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe oldest student is 66 years old and the youngest is 19. The group also includes a number of illiterate people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Training center\u2019<\/p>\n

None of the four instructors RFA contacted at Camp No. 4 could recall the official name of the facility, but one, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed during a phone interview to walk out to the courtyard to read the name of the camp\u2019s sign.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe name of our camp is \u2018The Center for Developing Skills for a Professional Career,\u2019\u201d the instructor said, adding that the reason he hadn\u2019t been able to remember the name was because it was \u201cchanged four times in the past eight months.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, it was called \u2018The Law and Regulation Training Center For Citizens\u2019 and then it was renamed \u2018The Career Training Center For The Unemployed\u2019 for a while, but now it is called \u2018The Center For Developing Skills For a Professional Career,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, the reason for changing the name is to avoid giving others a bad impression.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the instructor, staff live inside the camp and share the same courtyard with detainees. The center\u2019s main gate is guarded 24 hours a day and instructors are required to obtain permission if they need to leave the facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents are not allowed to leave the camp until they have completed the full program, but the length of the training is unclear\u2014the rules only say that the program is complete once a \u2018satisfactory level has been achieved,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been teaching for the last six months, but there is no one in my class who has completed the course and no one knows when the training will end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Detainees<\/p>\n

The same instructor passed his phone to a detainee who told RFA that he had been detained at Camp No. 4 after helping his brother send money to his son, who was studying in Turkey.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause my \u2018crime\u2019 was not deemed serious, I was placed here, but my brother, Abdurshit, is in prison [facing charges for] sending his son abroad without governmental permission,\u201d the detainee said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know this camp is called \u2018The Center For Developing Skills For a Professional Career,\u2019 but I was brought here in handcuffs with a black hood over my head. It was only after I passed through the security gate that the handcuffs and hood were removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another detainee named Osman Tursun, who spoke to RFA on a phone handed to him by an instructor, said he had been placed in the camp after he and several of his fellow residents from Yengitam village overheard religious teachings at a wedding ceremony in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive years ago, I went to a wedding in my neighborhood where a man discussed teachings from the Quran, though I don\u2019t remember the exact information,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 22 of us here from my village because we were at the same wedding and listened to the discussion. Apart from us, there are seven others from my village here who are former prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Korla city<\/p>\n

Sources in Bayin\u2019gholin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture\u2019s Korla city, where Uyghurs have protested house-to-house raids on their homes during \u201cstrike hard\u201d anti-terrorism campaigns in recent years, told RFA that the municipality houses three re-education camps with at least 2,100 detainees, as well as a \u201cSocialism Institute,\u201d where more than 40 religious figures are being held.<\/p>\n

Rehim Yasin, the Communist Party secretary of Korla\u2019s Qara Yulghun village, said that 86 of his village\u2019s 1,678 residents are currently being held in the city\u2019s three re-education camps, which are known as \u201cProfessional Career Improvement Centers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are all designed to re-educate people who are deemed politically incorrect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach camp holds at least 700 people, so in the three re-education camps there are at least 2,100 people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mutellep Esset, the party secretary for the Saybagh Street office in Korla, told RFA it was unclear how many people from his district had been detained at the city\u2019s re-education centers, but said many of those held had overseas connections.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned through my work that among the detainees [from my district] are 13 people held for traveling abroad with a tourist company, one person who had been on a hajj [Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca] two years ago, and two people who studied in Turkey for a short time before returning home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Vast network<\/p>\n

Investigations by RFA suggest there is a vast network of re-education camps throughout the Xinjiang region.<\/p>\n

Sources indicate that there are almost no majority ethnic Han Chinese held in the Xinjiang camps, and that the number of detainees in the region\u2019s south\u2014where the highest concentration of Uyghurs are based\u2014far surpasses that in the north.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, local officials in Xinjiang told RFA that thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities\u2014including Kyrgyz and Kazakh\u2014are being held in re-education camps without contact with their families under a policy designed to counter \u201cextremism\u201d in the region.<\/p>\n

New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch has called on the Chinese government to free the thousands of Xinjiang people placed in re-education camps since April 2017 and close them down.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s ruling Communist Party blames some Uyghurs for a string of violent attacks and clashes in China in recent years, but critics say the government has exaggerated the threat from the ethnic group, and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for violence that has left hundreds dead since 2009.<\/p>\n

China regularly conducts \u201cstrike hard\u201d campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.<\/p>\n

Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/uyghur\/camps-09292017160826.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shohret Hoshur \u2013 Re-education camps in two counties in northwest China\u2019s Xinjiang region, where mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghurs have protested Beijing\u2019s rule, house thousands of \u201cpolitically incorrect\u201d inmates who are rarely freed despite undergoing months of \u201ctraining,\u201d according to sources. The camps in Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining) county, in Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinas-uyghur-politics","category-uyghur-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}