Beijing: The leaked document, known as Xinjiang Police Files, from the internment camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), shows the Chinese government’s plan of genocide and crimes against Uyghurs.
The files contain information about over 20,000 detained Uyghurs, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.
Among the documents is a May 2017 speech by the Chinese Communist Party secretary of the XUAR (August 2016 – December 2021), Chen Quanguo. He said that the Chinese government’s crackdown in Xinjiang was not an act of stamping out criminals but rather an “extinction war” aimed at the Uyghur population. He called the Uyghurs an “enemy class.”
Chen described the campaign strategy of governing Xinjiang that was directed by the Chinese President Xi Jinping and included the imprisonment of Uyghurs.
According to the files, Chen’s instructions in his speech were based on directives received from China’s central government.
The former official also said that those detainees, who were sentenced to fewer than five years in prison should be mobilized for “learning law” and “bilingual learning,” and be released only after they reached a satisfactory study level no matter how many years it took, reported RFA.
The former official said Uyghurs deemed untrustworthy or harmful by the Chinese government had to be educated to the extent that they were committed to “completely freeing themselves from such ideas once they return to society.”
In his speech, Chen Quanguo mentioned Uyghurs as ‘harmful’ people. The Chinese government considers being “poisoned by terrorism, violence and extremism” or during contact with foreigners. Chen said such people needed to be “treated” in what he called a “people’s war.”
Information in the Xinjiang Police Files and other research reports and leaked documents suggest that what Chen referred to as poison included Uyghur traditions and Islamic activities.
Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in the U.S. and vice chairman of the executive committee of the World Uyghur Congress, said that the large-scale arbitrary detention of Uyghurs by the Chinese government and what Chen describes as a “people’s war” are tantamount to publicly declaring the entire Uyghur people is the “enemy of the Chinese state.”
Another important part of Chen’s speech was the extension of the government control over the Uyghur families. He believed that the police could monitor only a few households under what authorities called the “10 Families, One Ring” policy, creating a loophole in the surveillance of those who did not live in the vicinity of a police station, according to RFA.
To bring change to Uyghur communities and also to shape their way of living into Chinese ideas, Beijing imposed a “national language” on the Muslim ethnic minority.
In just a few months it was possible for the children to sing the national anthem in Chinese and to love the “great motherland,” Beijing and Tiananmen Square, Chen said.
“Only in this way can we make the next generation hopeful for long-term stability, follow the party and be grateful to the party,” Chen said.