CHINA’S alleged persecution of its Muslim minorities is back atop the global agenda after a massive trove of documents chronicling abuse emerged during a controversial visit by the UN’s human rights chief.

AFP takes a look at what is known about Beijing’s alleged crackdown against the country’s Uighur population and the international community’s response.

Abuse, ‘genocide’ allegations

Rights campaigners accuse China’s ruling Communist Party of widespread abuses against Uighurs and other mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking people in the western region of Xinjiang.

The United States and lawmakers in other western countries have even gone so far as to accuse China of committing “genocide” against the minority groups.

However, Beijing says its actions in the region have merely stamped out terrorism and reset the economy of one of its poorest areas.

Beijing vociferously denies the allegations of genocide, calling them the “lie of the century”.

Mass detentions

Chinese authorities have detained more than 1 million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in a secretive network of detention centres and prisons in Xinjiang, researchers say.

Beijing claims the facilities are vocational training schools that are attended voluntarily, but former detainees have alleged rape, torture and political indoctrination inside the facilities.

Guards equipped with tear gas, stun guns and spiked clubs keep control in centres ringed with barbed wire and infrared cameras, according to a 2018 review of government documents by AFP.

Further insight has come from a series of government data leaks, notably a 2019 cache known as the “Xinjiang Papers” illuminating the scale of Beijing’s internment strategy.

This week alone, thousands of leaked photos and official documents obtained by academic Adrian Zenz were revealed to the public, adding to evidence that mass internments were far from voluntary, and showing top leaders including President Xi Jinping calling for a forceful crackdown.

The reveal came as UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet visited the Xinjiang region, in what some warned was a Chinese public relations stunt meant to gloss over Beijing’s abuse and violence.

Earlier this month, a suspected police database reported by AFP detailed the charges of 10,000 imprisoned Uighurs in southwestern Xinjiang, with many serving years-long sentences for vaguely defined terrorism offences.

Additional papers obtained by Sheffield University scholar David Tobin and seen by AFP show how local officials in the region’s northern reaches were marshalled to indiscriminately target Muslims.

Forced labour

China also stands accused of forced “labour transfer” programmes using Uighurs to fuel international supply chains, especially in the textile sector.

Beijing claims the initiatives ease poverty by finding well-paid jobs for rural residents with low incomes.

However, research suggests authorities have instead coerced tens of thousands of people into fields and factories under a system linked to the detention camps.

Forced Uighur labour has seeped into major industries ranging from clothing to cars, smartphones to solar panels, according to a 2020 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think tank.

They include companies that supply well-known global brands, the researchers say.

Last year, the US passed a law banning the import of goods made with forced labour in Xinjiang.

In April, China said it had ratified two international conventions against forced labour.

Population controls

Scholars and rights advocates say hard-line birth control measures in Xinjiang since 2017 – including quotas on sterilisations and IUD insertions – are part of a deliberate attempt to slash ethnic minority births.

China has rubbished those claims and asserts that falling birth rates reflect regional economic development and changing social norms.

Population growth in some minority-heavy Xinjiang counties plunged between 2017 and 2019, according to research papers citing local government statistics.

The decline took place even as the central government has urged the mostly Han population nationwide to have more children in a bid to stave off a looming demographic crisis.

Population data is notably absent from Xinjiang’s more recent provincial yearbooks.

Cultural destruction

China has targeted Uighur religious, cultural and linguistic practices in recent years.

Some 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang – around two-thirds of the total – have been destroyed or damaged due to government policies mostly enacted since 2017, according to ASPI.

During a 2019 trip to the region, AFP reporters visited several holy sites that had been razed or repurposed, and found cities blanketed by cameras and police checkpoints.

Uighurs also allege they have faced state pressure not to speak their own language and to abandon Islamic customs such as praying, owning holy books or growing long beards. – AFP, May 25, 2022.