By Greg Oxley
The Xinjiang region, three times the size of France, lies across one of the key routes of the “Belt and Road” project. This means that it is of vital strategic importance to the industrial, commercial, and military needs of Chinese imperialism.
Today, the Chinese Communist Party, in power since 1949, is essentially the party of the state bureaucracy, whose interests are inseparably intertwined with the power and wealth of the capitalist enterprises which increasingly dominate the national economy.
The party apparatus is of crucial importance to the regime. Reaching deep down into every corner of society, it is an instrument of social and political control. The systematic suppression of ideas, rights, interests, and aspirations deemed to be incompatible with the dictatorship, applies to the whole of China, but has taken on a particularly ferocious and tyrannical character in relation to the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang.
Throughout this vast territory, the Uighur people have been subjected to a policy of repression, intimidation, police harassment, mass incarceration, and forced labour. In the streets and marketplaces, on public transport and even in their own homes, the Uighur population are in constant danger of arbitrary arrest on grounds of their appearance (forms of dress, beards that are “too long”), their religious beliefs and practices, or any other behaviours considered as a sign of what the regime calls “precriminality”.
State policy directed against Uighur culture and traditions
Official propaganda justifies the draconian “Strike Hard” policy, launched in 2014, by the struggle against terrorism and separatism. In practice, it is directed against all Uighurs from Muslim backgrounds. Apart from the hundreds of thousands of people who have been directly impacted by mass incarcerations and forced labour, the Uighur population as a whole is faced with humiliation and stigmatisation on a daily basis.
In some areas, for example, local authorities fix small metal plates onto doors of homes, certifying that a “clean” or “civilised” (i.e. non-Muslim) family lives there, whereas the homes of supposedly “precriminal” Muslims are randomly searched and ransacked by the police.
Modern surveillance technology is an essential part of control and repression, throughout China. No less than 1400 enterprises, most of them based on China, provide technologies for facial, voice, and gait recognition, as well as tracking tools, to state authorities in Xinjiang. Citizens there are routinely be stopped on the streets to have their phones checked for suspicious messaging. Failure to have a special Jingwang phone app installed and working can lead to arrest, heavy fines, and even a 10-day incarceration.
The app gives police access to photos and documents on smartphones, allowing them to track their owners’ messaging and monitor their contacts. Incidentally, this kind of technology-driven mass surveillance, which young people in China refer to as “electronic handcuffs”, should serve as a warning to workers and young people in the West, where “security concerns” are used to justify the curtailing of democratic freedoms and violations of privacy, and where dangerous authoritarian movements are gaining ground.
Hundreds of thousands in concentration camps
In Xinjiang’s cities, a network of surveillance cameras uses facial recognition on a massive scale. On buses and trains, signs warn that wearing veils and lengthy beards is prohibited.
Hundreds of thousands of inmates are kept in concentration camps, which the Xi Jinping regime describes as “voluntary vocational training centres.” Some human rights organisations put the overall number of people interned at some point at over a million. While China’s international rivals are certainly not averse to spreading lies or exaggerating truths about what goes on there, there can be little doubt about the nature of these “vocational training centres”.
Hundreds of concordant eyewitness and inmate accounts, together with numerous investigations, videos, and even official government records leaked to Western media outlets, provide a mass of compelling evidence about the macabre reality of these camps.
Clandestinely filmed videos show “students” arriving at the camps blindfolded, chained and under armed escort. Once inside, they are locked up in cramped conditions cells. The compound is surrounded by checkpoints and barbed wire. Every day, all inmates must swear allegiance to Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
Leaked government documents published by the New York Times, instruct camp administrators to “prohibit all contact with the outside world” and “prevent escapes” – instructions that are hardly compatible with “voluntary” participation. Detainees who are allowed to leave are subject to particularly strict surveillance and are obliged to submit regular reports on their movements and daily activities. Dozens of statements and interviews with former inmates tell horrific tales of rape and torture.
Women regularly taken from cells and raped
One of these inmates, Tursunay Ziawudun, who spent nine months in internment camps, fled China after her release and was interviewed by the BBC in early 2021. She said women were regularly removed from the cells and raped by one or more masked Chinese men, and that she had been tortured and gang-raped on three occasions.
As the BBC journalists recognise, it is obviously impossible to verify all the details of her account, because of the restrictions on free speech and reporting China places on reporters in the country. Nonetheless, what she describes: the nature and methods of the abuse, is consistent with many other accounts, including those of former guards.
Another female interviewee, Gulzira Auelkhan, who was obliged to perform certain tasks while serving 18 months of internment, said she was forced to strip Uighur women half-naked, handcuff them, before leaving them alone with Chinese men. Afterwards, she cleaned the rooms, she said. “Then I would leave the women in the room and a man would enter – some Chinese man from outside or policeman. I sat silently next to the door, and when the man left the room, I took the woman for a shower.” (Source BBC).
Many Uighur prisoners are subject to forced labour. Here again, many victims and eyewitnesses have come forward, detailing the harsh treatment of the workers trapped in this particular form of slavery. Slave-labour production of tomatoes and derivative products, branded as “Italian Tomatoes”, but in fact from Xinjiang, are often sold in western supermarkets (China grows about a third of the world’s tomatoes). This has received some media attention, thanks to the work of renowned origin-verification organisations such as “Source Certain” and “C4ADS”.
One worker, named as Mamutjan, was a teacher before being forced to work in this industry, described his experience to the BBC, saying he was beaten for failing to meet the high tomato quotas expected of him. “In a dark prison cell, there were chains hanging from the ceiling. They hung me up there and said ‘Why can’t you finish the job?’ They beat my buttocks really hard, hit me in the ribs. I still have marks.” Another inmate, Ahmed, confirmed this, and said that workers not meeting the quotas were sometimes shocked with electric prods.
Everything is done to eradicate Uighur culture
In an attempt to stamp out their national and cultural aspirations, everything is done to intimidate the Uighurs, to eradicate their culture and places of worship. A number of historic mosques have been destroyed, as have some traditional Uighur cemeteries.
The American news channel CNN, analyzing hundreds of satellite images in collaboration with sources in the Uighur community, has identified more than a hundred cemeteries that were destroyed over a two-year period. The destruction was first reported in October 2019 by AFP and satellite imagery analysts Earthrise Alliance. CNN’s investigation confirmed the demolition of the 45 cemeteries initially identified by AFP and adds about fifty more.
For Muslims in Xinjiang, cemeteries are a place at the heart of social life. By destroying their cemeteries, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to erase their history and humiliate all Uighur Muslims. Many of the cemeteries that have been destroyed have existed for hundreds of years. According to Uighur activists and supporting documents, the Sultanim cemetery has existed in one form or another for over 1,000 years. Today, its site is partially occupied by a new parking lot.
Despite a large number of direct testimonies, films and photographs, and numerous investigations by organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the Chinese regime continues to categorically deny any persecution of Uighurs. Indeed, until 2018, the Chinese government denied the very existence of the so-called re-education centres.
In February 2020, a document leaked from within the Chinese administration to reporters from German media outlets, including Süddeutsche Zeitung, showed how Uighur Muslims in China are being persecuted for everyday behaviours. The document shows in great detail the offences people were being interned for. The most common was violation of the vicious birth control laws (finally repealed in 2021).
Suspicious ‘behaviours’ that lead to imprisonment
Other offences or forms of suspicious behaviour were listed as wearing headscarves or beards, going on pilgrimages or travelling abroad. The possession of religious books was also given as a cause of imprisonment. In one case, a man was imprisoned for closing his restaurant during Ramadan, which designated him as a “risk for having extremist thoughts.”
In all, from just one county (Karakax), 300 Uighurs were detained between 2017 and 2018. The lists provide names, addresses, and lifestyle details (reading the Quran, praying) of another 1,800 suspects. After release, detainees are kept under surveillance.
The internment camps are not officially classified as prisons, and therefore, under Chinese law, no trial – and therefore no right to legal representation – is necessary.
In July, 2020), the BBC interviewed the Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Liu Xiaoming, who was confronted with drone footage showing hundreds of blindfolded Uighurs being led to trains. Liu Xiaoming simply responded by saying he “did not know” what the video showed.
Uighurs make up as many as a third of all Chinese prisoners
Since 2021, a process of closing down the camps has been underway. Estimates from Human Rights organisations and academic institutions vary as to the number of these camps, but there were probably 350 to 400 in existence in 2020. A study carried out by Yale University (last update 2023) presents an estimate of the total number of years of incarceration to be 4.4 million.
The camps are being replaced by formal imprisonment. In 2022, according to the Uighur Human Rights Project, one in twenty-six Uighurs are behind bars. For the entire population of China, 80 per 100 000 are in prison. For Uighurs and other Turkic peoples, the rate is 47 times higher. In total, 578,500 Uighurs or other Turkic people were in jail in 2022. This means that while Uighurs represent only 1% of China’s population, they account for a massive proportion of the country’s prison population – more than one third!
The sheer scale and ferocity of the oppression of the Uighurs is yet further proof of the utterly reactionary character of this so-called “Communist” regime, which in reality has nothing to do with socialism or communism as we understand it. There is not an iota of progressive content to this horrific regime.
Through the constant pressure of mass surveillance, internment, forced labour, indoctrination, ethnic and religious discrimination, the breaking up of families, forced abortions and sterilisations of Uighur women, the aim of the Communist Party regime is to destroy cultural identity of the Uighurs, to force through their “assimilation”, to break all resistance to injustice and achieve total submission to the dictatorship.
It is true that Islamic fundamentalist groups have perpetrated terrorist attacks in Xinjiang in the past, and that the threat of such attacks taking place is real. However, the strategy of the regime is to present all forms of protest, opposition, and social unrest as “terrorism”. Throughout China, standing up against exploitation, oppression, and injustice, means putting your home, your job, your freedom and even your life in danger.
It has been said that ancient China was considered as a “sleeping giant”. Today, it is a major imperialist power on the world arena. But within it, a modern “sleeping giant” – the working people of China – will surely awaken at some point. It is the only force which can rid the world of the present dictatorship, and open the way for the emergence of a genuinely democratic, egalitarian, socialist society.
Greg Oxley is editor of the French Marxist website, La Riposte, here.
[Feature picture of Uighur protest poster from Wikimedia Commons, here]
