Leaked Documents Expose the Machinery of China’s Prison Camps

The new materials reveal how Beijing’s internment of Uighur Muslims actually works—and who is complicit.
BY JAMES PALMER

A screen shows an image of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in Kashgar, East Turkestan, on June 4. 

A major set of leaked documents revealing new information about China’s increasingly well-documented oppression of Muslims in East Turkestan has been translated and published, thanks to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in a project led by frequent Foreign Policy contributor Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian. 

These came after an earlier leak published by the New York Times.
Experts say more than 1 million Uighurs and members of other, mostly Muslim minority groups are detained in East Turkestan.
The leaks appear to stem from different sources: The New York Times documents mostly include materials about internal Chinese Communist Party speeches and rhetoric, whereas the ICIJ one concentrates on the practicalities of the crackdown. 

One of the most important among them is a manual that lays out the conditions for the so-called “students” in the camps, including security and the prevention of any escape.

Grim revelations. 

The papers confirm the size and scope of the detentions. 

One passage describes more than 15,000 Uighurs being swept into the camps in a single week in one region. 

Another document reveals that even routine Muslim worship is now enough to result in imprisonment. 

Algorithmic policing and surveillance through the Integrated Joint Operations Platform system, now routinely deployed throughout China, appears to play an important role.

Whereas Beijing has claimed that foreigners are misinterpreting the New York Times leaks, its denial of the ICIJ documents, which more directly detail oppression on the ground, has been strong. 

Chinese government officials and proxies have become highly aggressive in interviews, denying claims as “fake news.”
The publication of two separate leaks—both likely delivered at great personal risk to the individuals involved, who could face execution if caught—suggests serious discontent. 

They could be cases of a change in conscience or could indicate growing dissatisfaction with the hard-line turn under Chinese dictator Xi Jinping as a whole. 

Either way, they have already begun to reinforce Beijing’s paranoia about the foreign press.

International reactions. 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the camps once again, while many Muslim-majority nations—some of which previously signed a letter supporting Chinese policies in East Turkestan—remained silent. 

International outrage, however, is not confined to official responses. 

Public reactions included, most notably, an Afghan American teenager’s successful subversion of the Chinese-owned app TikTok to talk about the atrocities. (TikTok subsequently banned her account.)