In a November 2019 story, “ ‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims,” The New York Times reports on documentary evidence of the procedures and goals of Chinese governance of the Xinjiang region.
The 403 pages of Chinese Communist Party documents constitute “one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China’s ruling Communist Party in decades,” notes the author, Austin Ramzy. “They provide an unprecedented inside view of the continuing clampdown in Xinjiang, in which the authorities have corralled as many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps and prisons over the past three years.”
The report includes images of some of the 403 documents and translations. One document offers advice to authorities in Xinjiang on how to talk to college kids coming home to find out that family members and neighbors were suddenly missing. The students were to be told that the missing people were in a government “training school” and that although they were not criminals, they could not be allowed to leave just yet. Also that how the students themselves behaved would affect how long loved ones must remain in the “schools.”
If necessary, students were to be told that the purpose of the training was to extirpate the virus of Islamic radicalism infecting family members. “Treasure this chance for free education that the party and government has provided to thoroughly eradicate erroneous thinking, and also learn Chinese and job skills. This offers a great foundation for a happy life for your family.”
The documents also indicate that officials who failed to cooperate with the mass roundups of Uyghurs were purged. An official who had the temerity to release thousands from the camps was jailed.
“Though it is unclear how the documents were gathered and selected, the leak suggests greater discontent inside the party apparatus over the crackdown than previously known,” Ramzy writes. “The papers were brought to light by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed home that their disclosure would prevent party leaders, including Mr. Xi [Xi Jinping], from escaping culpability for the mass detentions.”
