Source: The Guardian (8/13/18)
China defends ‘intense controls’ in Xinjiang amid detention claims
UN panel says 1m ethnic Uighur Muslims are being held in internment camps in region
By Lily Kuo in Beijing
Police patrol a Uighur neighbourhood in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang, home to about 12 million Muslims. Photograph: Tom Phillips/Guardian
Chinese state media have defended the country’s “intense controls” in Xinjiang, a western territory where human rights advocates claim thousands of Muslim minorities are being routinely detained in mass internment camps.
On Friday, a UN human rights panel said it had received credible reports that as many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs were being held in camps, where they can be kept indefinitely, without due process.
The state-run Global Times published dual English and Chinese-language editorials on Monday criticising western interference and defending its policies in Xinjiang, where ethnic violence and terrorist attacks have prompted a crackdown and an intense militarisation of the region.
Last year, 21% of all arrests in China were in Xinjiang, a territory that accounts for about 1.5% of the population, according to the advocacy group Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Critics say controls over religious and cultural expression have increased since 2016 under the region’s Communist party secretary, Chen Quanguo, drafted to Xinjiang from Tibet.
In an editorial with the headline “Safeguarding Xinjiang’s peace and stability is the most important human right”, the Global Times said: “There is no doubt that intense control contributes to Xinjiang’s peace today. It’s a necessary stage guiding [Xinjiang] to peace and prosperity, and it will not last long.”
It came as a regular UN review of China’s record on racial discrimination continued on Monday. Chinese representatives will have a chance to respond to statements made by the UN panel last week. The editorials, which presage Beijing’s response to the panel, mark a shift, from denial of the camps and any use of discriminatory practices in Xinjiang, to justification.
“It is because of [the] party’s leadership, a powerful China, and local officials’ courage that Xinjiang has been pulled back from the brink of chaos. It has avoided becoming ‘China’s Syria’ or ‘China’s Libya’,” the paper wrote.
On Friday, Gay McDougall, a vice-chairwoman of the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination, told the panel: “We are deeply concerned at the many numerous and credible reports that we have received that, in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability, [China] has changed the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internship camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of ‘no rights zone’.”
McDougall’s statement is the first the UN has made on the subject of the camps, which have been documented by researchers, activists and journalists. According to reports, they are used for “re-educating” members of Xinjiang’s Muslim population of 12 million people, most of them Uighurs, as well as Kazakhs and Hui Chinese.
Because previous statements about the camps have come from NGOs and journalists, experts say such remarks from the UN, seen as a neutral observer, will enable countries to raise the issue of Xinjiang with China, issue public statements, or discuss the possibility of sanctions.