Human rights organisation, Amnesty International has said China is committing crimes against humanity in the Mainland’s north-western province of Xinjiang, targeting its resident Uyghur and Kazakh populations along with those of other Muslim minorities.
In a 160-page report compiled by the organisation’s International Crisis Response team and titled, ”Like We Were Enemies in a War’: China’s Mass Internment, Torture, and Persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang,’ Amnesty records the testimonies of 55 former detainees who describe the extreme measures taken by Chinese authorities since 2017, to stamp out the religious, linguistic and cultural practices of Muslim ethnic groups.
“The Chinese authorities have created a dystopian hellscape on a staggering scale in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary-General, Agnès Callamard. “It should shock the conscience of humanity that massive numbers of people have been subjected to brainwashing, torture and other degrading treatment in internment camps, while millions more live in fear amid a vast surveillance apparatus,” she added.
Interviewee testimonies paint a grim picture of internment camps – what China has called ‘transformation-through-education’ centres – where hundreds of thousands of detainees are subjected to physical torture, sleep and food deprivation, the abusive use of restraints and lengthy periods of solitary confinement as part of what appears to be a strictly regimented process of dehumanisation.
The use of ‘tiger chairs’ – steel chairs affixed with leg irons and handcuffs intended to force a body in place – features prominently, with many interviewees stating that they were strapped to them for lengthy periods of time, sometimes as long as three days.
Detainees were afforded no privacy and autonomy and punished for acts of trivial disobedience such as speaking in their native languages. Constantly monitored and evaluated, detainees were also forced to undergo ‘education’ programmes where they were taught to disavow Islam and its cultural practices, study Mandarin Chinese and Chinese Communist Party propaganda, the report finds.
Xinjiang’s Muslim population is also one of the most heavily surveilled populations in the world. Even once detainees are released, they remain under constant electronic and in-person surveillance. These sometimes include being forced to reside in ‘homestays’ where Chinese authorities relentlessly monitor for suspicious behaviour like the use of instant messaging applications like WhatsApp, virtual private networks or ‘unusual’ electricity usage.
Freedom of movement is also hugely restricted with security forces patrolling streets around the clock and thousands of checkpoints littered around the region.
The report also delves into the extent to which Chinese authorities engage in religious persecution, showing little mercy to those expressing or practising their Islamic faith. It notes that, as a consequence of this, most minorities have stopped praying or revealing any sign that they belong to Islam. Religious items and artefacts are also confiscated by authorities during surprise raids and inspections, with religious and cultural sites destroyed and repurposed throughout the province.
While several of the study’s findings have been previously reported, the latest Amnesty brief is likely to further embolden countries’ and rights groups’ campaigns to investigate the goings-on in Xinjiang. The US, for instance, has previously called China’s actions in the north-western province genocide, something that the parliaments of the UK, Canada, Lithuania and the Netherlands have concurred with.
Earlier this year, the EU, US, UK and Canada thrust sanctions on Chinese officials, referencing the reported abuses. China responded swiftly with retaliatory sanctions of its own against foreign lawmakers, researchers and organisations.
