China's crimes against humanity

Security cameras and barbed wire: Living amid fear and oppression in East Turkestan
By Matt Rivers and Lily Lee

East Turkestan -- The small bedroom is frozen in time. The two little girls who used to sleep here left two years ago with their mother and now can't come home.

Their backpacks and school notebooks sit waiting for their return. 

A toy bear lies on the bed. 

Their clothes hang neatly in the closet.
The girls' grandmother says she can't bring herself to change it.
"The clothes still smell like them," she says, her words barely audible through heavy sobs.
Ansila Esten and Nursila Esten, ages 8 and 7, left their home in Almaty, Kazakhstan, with their mother, Adiba Hayrat, in 2017.
The three traveled to China where Adiba Hayrat planned to take a course in makeup application and visit her parents in the western border region of East Turkestan, leaving her husband, Esten Erbol, and then 9-month-old son Nurmeken behind in Kazakhstan, Esten told CNN.
Not long after she arrived, however, she was detained. 

He hasn't heard from her for more than two years.
"My son wasn't even 1 when she left," Esten Erbol said. 

"When he sees young women in the neighborhood, he calls them mama. He doesn't know what his own mother looks like."

Adbia Hayrat's two daughters, Ansila Esten and Nursila Esten, in a family photo kept by their father.

Adiba Hayrat and her two daughters are Chinese citizens, of Kazakh minority descent.
She grew up in China, as did their daughters.
Their young son was born in Almaty.
The family was in the process of becoming citizens of Kazakstan when Adiba Hayrat was taken by Chinese authorities.
Her family in Kazakhstan says she was held in a detention camp in East Turkestan for more than a year, while her children were sent to live with distant relatives.
She has since been released, according to her family.
But Adiba Hayrat is now living with her parents and working in a forced labor facility, earning pitiful wages, unable to contact her family in Kazakhstan for fear of being sent back into detention.
According to the US State Department, up to 2 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs and other predominately Muslim ethnic minorities have been held against their will in massive camps in East Turkestan.
An unknown number are working in forced labor facilities, and like Adiba, they are unable to leave China.

'My wife is not a terrorist'
Activists and former detainees allege the East Turkestan concentration camps were built rapidly over the last three years, the latest stage in an ongoing and widespread crackdown against ethnic minorities in the region.
Torture inside the camps is rampant, including in accounts given to CNN by former detainees.
The Chinese government has faced a rising tide of international criticism over its East Turkestan policies, including from the United States.
The camps are Beijing's attempt to eliminate the region's Islamic cultural and religious traditions -- a process of sinicization, by which ethnic minorities are forcibly assimilated into wider majority Han Chinese culture.
Beijing says the camps are "vocational training centers" designed to fight terrorism.
Even if you buy that explanation, Esten Erbol said, it wouldn't apply to his wife.
"My wife is not a terrorist," he said.

Adiba Hayrat and her son Nurmeken, who has been separated from his mother for more than a year.

After Adiba's detention ended, Esten Erbol was told by a friend in the area that his wife had been allowed to live with her parents and children again while she worked in the forced labor facility.
Many ex-detainees are forced to work in such facilities, used by authorities to maintain control over the former detainees.
A US congressional bill introduced in January said there were credible reports that former detainees were made to produce cheap consumer goods in forced work facilities under threat of returning to the detention centers.
Esten Erbol has been told by a friend in the area that officials took his wife's passport, so she and their daughters can't return to Kazakhstan.
The wait is agony.
He has no way to contact her directly, and fears if he traveled to East Turkestan to find her, he could end up in a camp himself.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to a request for comment when asked about the family's allegations about her detention, or whether she is currently being forced to work.

China's 'new territory'
East Turkestan is the largest Chinese colony, a sprawling arid landscape in the country's far west which has a comparatively tiny population of 22 million.
It is home to a variety of minority groups, of which the predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghurs are the largest.
Uyghurs are culturally and linguistically distinct from Han Chinese, the country's dominant ethnic group.
This is due in part to the fact that East Turkestan has only officially been part of China for less than two centuries.
These differences have led Beijing to often take a stricter approach to security in East Turkestan but those policies have become more draconian following violent protests against Han Chinese in July 2009.
The riots saw locals rampage through the capital Urumqi with clubs, knives and stones, resulting in a brutal counterattack by paramilitary police and the Chinese military.
Chinese state media said a total of 197 people were killed.
When CNN travelled through East Turkestan, the signs of an increased police presence were everywhere.
Today, in most cities in East Turkestan, there are facial surveillance cameras about every 150 feet, feeding images back to central command centers, where people's faces and routines are monitored and cross-referenced.
Mobile police checkpoints pop up at random throughout the region, leading to long lines on public roads.
At the checkpoints, and sometimes randomly on the street, police officers stop people to ask for their ID cards and occasionally demand to plug unidentified electronic devices into cellphones to scan them without explanation.
Daily life is much easier in East Turkestan for Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic majority in the rest of China.
At the security checkpoints, Han Chinese are often waived through without being checked or presenting ID.
During a nearly week-long trip to the region CNN did not witness one non-Han Chinese person afforded the same privilege.
For Uyghurs or other residents, the increased surveillance has turned their lives upside down.
A simple trip to the market or to see friends can take hours, due to the unpredictable and intrusive nature of the police checks.
Everyone knows someone who's been detained or at least harassed, activists say.
Behind the walls of East Turkestan's camps, former detainees say even worse awaits those who fall foul of authorities.
State media has produced a constant drum beat of news that the terrorism threat in the region is real and would spin out of control were it not for the strict security measures.
As a result, many local Han Chinese we spoke to support the policies.
"Life has gotten so much safer in the past few years," one Han Chinese taxi driver said, declining to give his name.
He said East Turkestan is safer for everyone now.
"Even if I leave my car on the street unlocked, I don't worry about it getting stolen."

Barbed wire and guard towers
In late March, CNN traveled to East Turkestan for six days to get a first-hand look at the camps, attempting to see three different facilities in three cities hundreds of miles apart.
The Chinese government has repeatedly decried foreign media's reporting on the camps as inaccurate, claiming authorities have been transparent about the facilities.
Beijing has invited diplomats from select countries to tour the camps in a tightly controlled setting. 
The diplomats come from countries with their own circumspect records on human rights, including Pakistan, Russia and Uzbekistan.
A select group of journalists has visited the camps under similar conditions.
Reuters was the only representative of Western media.
CNN has asked repeatedly to be allowed to visit the camps.
All those requests were denied or ignored.
When CNN attempted to visit the camps, there was repeated obstruction by Chinese authorities who blocked attempts to film, to speak to the relatives of inmates and to even travel to certain parts of the region.
The closest CNN got to a camp was in a small city named Artux, not far from the city of Kashgar, in East Turkestan's southwest.

Concentration camp on the outskirts of Kashgar, which CNN tried to enter but was turned away by guards.

The building which China has described as a "voluntary vocational training center" looked far more like a prison. 
The massive facility was ringed by a high wall, barbed wire and guard towers, as well as large numbers of security personnel.
CNN was prevented by authorities at the facility from openly filming it, despite complying with Chinese laws on journalistic activities.
Attempts to speak to the dozens of people bringing food to their family members inside the camp were blocked by nearly 20 security personnel and government officials who pulled up not long after CNN arrived.
When asked, a woman told CNN her mother was "receiving training" inside the camp.
Another man said his brother was being held there for a vague "ID violations."
But when both were pressed for more information, a half-dozen plain-clothed officials shouted at the man and the woman to be quiet and return to their cars.
They didn't fight the order.

'Why are you here?'
More than 1,000 miles to the east of Kashgar lies the city of Turpan.
It's a small town by Chinese standards, just over 600,000 people, surrounded by a fiercely inhospitable desert.
CNN attempted to see another camp in the city, finding a large facility surrounded by a high wall.
But after arriving at the center, the team were greeted by local police, who angrily demanded to know what they were doing there.
When asked what the facility was, one police officer responded angrily, "You don't have to be asking that! Why are you here?"
No further access to the camp was given, and the officer demanded the footage be deleted.

Another concentration camp outside the town of Turpan, which CNN also found to be inaccessible.

Outside Urumqi, a third camp was completely inaccessible.
A police checkpoint blocked the only road leading to the facility, several miles away from the site.
Local drivers were allowed to pass the site, but a police officer told CNN that no foreigners were allowed down the road.
When asked why, he simply shrugged and asked the team to respect "local regulations."
It's unclear what regulations he was referring to.
CNN asked both the East Turkestan government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the obstacles faced when doing legal journalism in East Turkestan.
Neither responded.

China tries to thwart CNN probe into detention camps

'Love of my life'
Hundreds of miles to the north, the town of Toli also turned out to be completely inaccessible.
Esten Erbol, the father of the two missing girls, believes that this town is where his wife and daughters are residing with her parents.
It's also where he and his wife, Adiba Hayrat, first met and fell in love.
CNN tried on two separate occasions to drive to Toli to see the town and try to find Adiba but was blocked by officials both times before reaching its center.
On the first occasion, local government officials at the nearest airport said it would be possible to see the town.
But on the drive there, the road was blocked by police who said there had been a traffic accident up ahead.
No accident was visible for miles down the flat, empty road.
The second time, instead of being allowed to access the town, the CNN team was escorted by police to a small tourist area and forced to attend a banquet that had been hastily arranged inside a makeshift yurt.
Horse and lamb were served as musicians played traditional folk music, to which government officials danced enthusiastically.
Multiple requests to leave and see the town were ignored.
In the end, the team had to drive back to the airport immediately to avoid missing its flight.
Despite multiple attempts, the CNN team didn't locate Adiba or her daughters.
Esten had sent a message to be passed onto his wife, should the team reach her.
"Tell her that her son and I are waiting for her, that we will always wait for her and that she is the love of my life," Esten wrote CNN via text message.
Adiba did not hear those words.
And it's unclear if she ever will.

The forgotten victims of China’s Belt and Road Initiative

By Aaron Halegua and Jerome A. Cohen

World leaders will soon gather in Beijing for the second forum on China’s Belt and Road Initiative — the $1 trillion plan involving China’s bilateral agreements with more than 100 countries to enhance “connectivity” by building infrastructure projects and deepening economic ties. 

In the run-up to the event, critics have highlighted the projects’ negative impacts on host countries, such as debt traps, land seizures, corruption and environmental degradation. 

Some have pointed out the difficulties of establishing fair methods for resolving the many disputes that are arising between China and its new partners. 

A few have criticized the failure of certain projects to create adequate jobs for locals.
But one group of victims is often overlooked: the Chinese workers dispatched overseas to build these projects. 

If discussed at all, these migrant workers are generally demonized as the infantry “invading” the host country and “stealing” local jobs. 

In reality, they are extremely vulnerable to exploitation by their employers, sometimes even more so than their local co-workers.
The International Labor Organization reports that there are 14.2 million people in forced-labor situations worldwide and that indebted migrant workers are particularly vulnerable. 

Overseas Chinese workers are no exception.
The recent federal criminal conviction of a Chinese construction firm executive for subjecting workers in New York to forced labor is a case in point. 

According to trial testimony, prior to leaving China, the workers signed contracts promising to not interact with locals, to not leave their residence without permission and to return to China after completing their multi-year assignment — at which point the bulk of their salary would be paid. 

Each worker was required to post a security deposit of more than $20,000 to guarantee his compliance. 

Once in New York, workers’ passports were seized and they were required to work long hours and live in unsafe conditions. 

Fear of losing their security deposit and not collecting their earned wages essentially handcuffed them from escaping this exploitation.
This case is not unique. 

Official statistics reported there were nearly 1 million overseas Chinese workers in 2018 (excluding the large number of undocumented Chinese migrants), and researchers studying Chinese projects in places such as Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands have found abhorrent labor conditions for foreign workers.
Incurring significant debts to pay large recruitment fees based on inaccurate job information is quite common. 

Federal authorities found that each of 2,400 migrant workers hired by Chinese firms to build a casino in Saipan, part of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, paid recruiters, on average, $6,000 in fees, and that they were cheated out of millions of dollars in wages.
In Belarus, hundreds of Chinese workers were unpaid for three months after working “like slaves.” 

Chinese companies failed to pay proper wages, provide protective equipment and conduct safety training in the Bahamas, Ethiopia and Vietnam, respectively. 

A Chinese construction worker in Israel recently died on the job. 

And, for those employees working for smaller Chinese subcontractors, labor conditions can be even worse.
Deep in debt, without passports, and lacking access to transportation and independent advice, Chinese workers are often left to endure these conditions without recourse. 

Those lacking proper visas are subject to quick deportation and are thus even more vulnerable. Language barriers make effective complaining to the host government difficult, and the Chinese embassy or consulate may be hours away. 

Those workers who are courageous enough to protest their maltreatment have been beaten by their employers or arrested and deported by local authorities.
So why should China care? 

Aside from a duty to protect its citizens, these conditions frustrate China’s broader objectives for the Belt and Road Initiative, such as building “win-win” projects, “people-to-people” connections and soft power. 

If Chinese executives are eventually jailed and projects stalled, companies and lenders will lose money. 

Employing flocks of often illegal Chinese migrants housed in Chinese enclaves fuels resentment amongst locals, while subjecting its citizens to abusive and unsafe work conditions inevitably hurts China’s image. 

Rampant immigration and labor violations have already caused officials in some jurisdictions to question lax visa policies that previously welcomed Chinese.
To its credit, China has acknowledged these problems, issuing policies and regulations that prohibit the collection of recruitment fees or security deposits, ban the hiring of workers on tourist visas and instruct companies to safeguard labor rights. 

But policies and regulatory standards are usually vague and not legally binding, and the legal provisions in place are routinely violated.
China should announce plans to address this issue at this month’s forum. 

The policies governing overseas conduct by Chinese firms — particularly those regulating subcontracting — should be translated into detailed, binding domestic laws with real penalties that are rigorously enforced. 

China’s banks should require projects they fund to adhere to and report on fair labor standards and practices. 

Complaint mechanisms must be established, and workers taught how to access them. 

Chinese embassies and consulates should assist in monitoring labor conditions. 

And China should demonstrate its commitment to labor rights by finally ratifying the International Labor Organization’s conventions on forced labor.
If China hopes to persuade host countries that it respects the rights and interests of their citizens, the best place to start is by showing how seriously it takes the welfare of its own.

China's crimes against humanity

CHINA’S UYGHUR CONCENTRATION CENTERS AND THE GHOSTS OF SOVIET AND GERMAN EXTERMINATION CAMPS 

By MICHAEL CLARKE

It is now beyond doubt that China is undertaking a program of mass incarceration of the Uyghur population of its northwestern colony of East Turkestan in a region-wide network of detention and “re-education” centers.
Up to 1.5 million Uyghurs (and other Turkic Muslim minorities) are caught up in the largest human rights crisis in the world today. 
Analysis based on Chinese government procurement contracts for construction of these centers and Google Earth satellite imaging has revealed hundreds of large, prison-like facilities that are estimated to hold up to 1 million of East Turkestan’s Turkic Muslims. 
One of the largest concentration camps, Dabancheng, could hold up to 130,000 people, architectural analysis suggests.
Many of these facilities resemble prisons, complete with barbed wire, guard towers and CCTV cameras.
Within them detainees are compelled to repeatedly sing “patriotic” songs praising the benevolence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), study Mandarin, Confucian texts, and Xi Jinping’s “thought.”
Those who resist or do not make satisfactory progress “risk solitary confinement, food deprivation, being forced to stand against a wall for extended periods, being shackled to a wall or bolted by wrists and ankles into a rigid ‘tiger chair,’ and waterboarding and electric shocks.”
This inevitably brings to mind the grim precedents of the Stalinist gulag and Nazi concentration camps. 
There are clear ideological and tactical parallels between those examples and what is occurring in East Turkestan.
China’s “re-education” centers reflect a similar totalitarian drive to not only use repression as a means of control but to mobilize society around an exclusive ideology, which, as Juan Jose Luiz remarks, “goes beyond a particular program or definition of the boundaries of legitimate political action to provide some ultimate meaning, sense of historical purpose and interpretation of social reality.” Under Xi, William Callhan suggests, the ideology centers on the “China dream” of “great national rejuvenation” which is not focused on the Maoist “class struggle” but rather on an “appeal to unity over difference, and the collective over the individual” as a means of achieving the country’s return to great power status.
Crucially, this approach blends aspects of the statism of the Leninist model and traditional Chinese statecraft, which, as James Leibold notes, have both long held a “paternalistic approach that pathologizes deviant thought and behavior, and then tries to forcefully transform them.”
Consider, for instance, the East Turkestan CCP Youth League official who asserted that the re-education centers are necessary to “cleanse the virus [of extremism] from their brain” and to help them “return to a healthy ideological state of mind.”
Tactically, there are also parallels between the manner in which Beijing has sought to justify its actions to domestic and international audiences, and those of the Soviet and Nazi regimes. 
As both of those totalitarian governments did, Xi’s China has embarked on a multiphase propaganda strategy to manage the potential fallout from its “re-education” efforts: secrecy and outright denial giving way to justificatory counter-narratives, propaganda intended for domestic consumption, and “tours” of camps for select foreign observers.
However, crucial differences suggest a different model of state control of society in China.
This model is defined on the one hand by the idea that political and social “deviancy” should be proactively transformed rather than excluded, and on the other hand by the innovative use of surveillance and monitoring technologies that paradoxically have allowed more international scrutiny. Thus it is to be hoped that, unlike the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, China will not succeed in obscuring its systematic incarceration and destruction of excluded populations.

From denial to justification
China has employed a strategy of outright denial about the "re-education" centers, followed by counter-narratives.
This approach is similar to those deployed by Stalin to defend the gulag labor camp system and by Hitler to defend the first concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
The CCP has suggested that reports of mass “re-education” are the product of either ignorance or malicious “misinformation.”
Thus the state-run China Daily editorialized in August 2018 that “foreign media” had “misinterpreted or even exaggerated the security measures” China had implemented in East Turkestan.
These “false stories,” the article alleged, were being spread by those bent on “splitting the region from China and turning it into an independent country.”
Senior officials echoed such denials before international forums.
Shortly after the China Daily editorial was published, Hu Lianhe, a senior member of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, told the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination point-blank that “there is no such thing as re-education centers” in East Turkestan.
However, just over a month later Chinese officials and media changed their tune to deploy a narrative that framed the facilities as a necessary and benevolent measure to assist Uyghurs from succumbing to the scourge of “extremism.” 
The party’s discourse on “extremism,” as Jerome Doyon noted in War on the Rocks, “aims to legitimize mobilizing the population for a massive social transformation of the region” in the service of “a preventive approach to terrorism” that targets Uyghur identity.
In October 2018, the chairman of the East Turkestan government, Shohrat Zakir, told the state-run news agency Xinhua that China was simply pursuing an approach to counter-terrorism “according to their own conditions.”
In the first, if circuitous, admission of the existence of the “re-education” centers, Zakir stated that enduring terrorist attacks in East Turkestan required that authorities not only “strictly” push back against extremism but also address “the root cause of terrorism” by “educating those who committed petty crimes” so as to “prevent them from becoming victims of terrorism and extremism.”
In 1931, as Stalin embarked on his mass collectivization campaign, Maya Vinokour notes: “Russian papers began calling reports of forced labor ‘filthy slander’ concocted by an ‘anti-Soviet front’” before soon thereafter admitting forced labor was happening.
Vyachslav Molotov, one of Stalin’s key lieutenants, stated publicly in March 1931 that forced labor “was good for criminals, for it accustoms them to labor and makes them useful members of society.” 
Just as China has attempted to frame the “re-education” camps as positive and necessary, Soviet authorities expended great propaganda efforts to frame the gulag as a transformative “reforging” of former “class enemies” into ideologically committed Soviet citizens.
After Hitler’s ascent to chancellorship in 1933, his regime almost immediately established the first concentration camps for around 150,000 people — mostly those defined by the regime as irreconcilable political opponents, such as communists and social democrats.
Similar to Stalin’s strategy, these camps“were sold to the German people as reformatory establishments rather like penitentiaries for offending adolescents in 1950s America, where the public were told fresh air, exercise and skills training were on offer to discipline social deviants who could then be returned to the society.”

Painting a rosy picture: The role of propaganda
Both the Soviets and the Nazis produced prominent tracts of propaganda in both print and film to justify the gulags and the concentration camps.
Most notable in the Soviet case was the 1933 History of the Construction of the Stalin White Sea-Baltic Canal — a 600-page volume collectively written by 120 Soviet writers and artists under the supervision of Maxim Gorky, then the Soviet Union’s most famous writer.
This tome exulted in the fact that construction of the 227-kilometer canal used the forced labor of some 150,000 gulag inmates.
It was also accompanied by a film capturing Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, and Sergei Kirov undertaking a celebratory cruise on its official opening in July 1933.
Film was an even more important medium of propaganda for the Nazis.
During World War II, the regime produced the infamous film Theresienstadt: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area — a supposedly “objective” depiction (hence the subtitle of “documentary”) of life in a Jewish concentration camp in occupied Czechoslovakia.
The film included scenes of inmates training in baking, sewing and carpentry, watching a camp orchestra, and playing a soccer match. 
The film was carefully scripted and stage-managed and was intended for foreign audiences — for instance, it was screened for a delegation of the International Red Cross in April 1945.
China too has produced such stage-managed visual propaganda on its re-education camps. 
On the same day as Zakir’s interview with Xinhua, China Central Television (CCTV) aired a 15-minute story detailing interviews with “cadets” in the Khotan “Vocational Skills Education and Training Center” in southern East Turkestan.
Echoing Theresienstadt, the story depicts the center as an altruistic CCP endeavor to provide “education” through training in the Mandarin language and the Chinese legal code, along with “vocational skills” such as cosmetology, carpet weaving, sewing, baking, and carpentry. 
A young Uyghur woman interviewed on camera said, “If I didn’t come here, I can’t imagine the consequences. Maybe I would have followed those religious extremists on the criminal path.
The party and the government discovered me in time and saved me.”
The supposedly benevolent nature of such assistance is somewhat belied by one scene in the film — showing “cadets” taking Mandarin classes — that reveals the “classroom” is under constant surveillance with cameras clearly visible on the walls and microphones hanging from the ceiling.

China’s gulag ‘tourism’
The final plank in China’s propaganda effort is what amounts to Potemkin tours of the East Turkestan camps for foreign observers.
This, too, has clear Soviet precedents. 
Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, sponsored what historian Jeffrey Hardy has dubbed “gulag tourism” whereby Soviet authorities carefully managed visits for foreign delegations to major penal institutions throughout the 1950s.
This was an attempt to both negate the predominant Western narrative of the gulag as a slave labor system and demonstrate the positive social benefits of the system.
China’s preparations for its own version of “gulag tourism” have been characterized by both secrecy and deception. 
As authorities anticipated visits of international observers late last year, Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur-language service reported that detainees had been required to sign “confidentiality agreements” to ensure that they did not divulge details of their experiences, while obvious manifestations of security and surveillance — such as barbed wire and heavily-armed police — were either removed or scaled back. 
Moreover, according to Bitter Winter, local authorities have been ordered to compile more detailed information on the seriousness of individual detainees’ “crimes” to determine which detainees could be transferred “to facilities that are less obviously prison-like, appearing more like low-cost housing.”
With such preparations made, Beijing permitted a tour of the facilities by some diplomats and international media.
From Jan. 3 to 5 officials chaperoned diplomats from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kuwait, and Thailand and reporters from Kazakhstan’s state-run agency, Kazinform, Sputnik News, Associated Press of Pakistan, and Indonesia’s national news agency Antara to facilities in Urumqi, Kashgar, and Khotan.
The diplomats and journalists were told an identical narrative as the one detailed above: The centers were implemented to “assist those affected by extremism” by provision of education in Mandarin, Chinese laws, and “vocational skills.”
Three European Union officials toured a number of facilities the following week.
Beijing obviously hoped its managed tours of “re-education” camps would deflect international criticism.
But it appears the efforts have not achieved their objective.
Neither set of visitors seems to have been deceived by the Potemkin tours. 
A report published by Kazinform, for example, concludes by dryly noting the similarities in testimony provided by “trainees” and that “throughout the press tour in all cities and locations, interviews were taken in the mandatory presence of Chinese authorities.”
Pakistan’s response was a notable exception (Pakistan is a long-term ally of China).
Islamabad’s charge d’affaires in Beijing, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, asserted that “I did not see any sign of cultural repression” and during her visit to three facilities she “observed the students to be in good physical health” while “living facilities are fairly modern and comfortable.”
The European Union delegation, by contrast, noted that while “the sites that were visited were carefully selected by the authorities to support China’s official narrative,” they judged what they observed to be “consistent” with what international media, academics, and nongovernmental organizations have documented over the past two years — i.e., that “major and systematic human rights violations” are in fact occurring in East Turkestan.
For both Stalin and Hitler, domestically-oriented propaganda was arguably more important than staving off international criticism, as the former contributed to regime legitimacy and served as a means of mobilization of support. 
In the Soviet case, as Steven Barnes demonstrates, the gulag played a central role in the “construction of socialist society and the new Soviet person” by emphasizing key ideological tropes including struggle as the motivating force of history, labor as the defining feature of humanity, and the redeemability of class enemies.
In the Chinese context, much of the CCP’s propaganda plays directly to what Brandon Barbour and Reece Jones describe as a “discourse of danger” erected around the Uyghur since 9/11.
Through this narrative, state media “seek to de-humanise the Uyghur, creating the perception that the Uyghur identity category is filled with a backward people” susceptible to “extremism.” 
In this way, Beijing implies that disorder and violence would ensue if it didn’t forcefully penetrate East Turkestan with the state’s security and surveillance capabilities.
Like their Soviet precedents, however, official statements on the “re-education” centers also emphasize their objective of redeeming actual or potential extremists.
The March 2019 white paper, “The Fight against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in East Turkestan” released by China’s State Council, asserts that while “a few leaders and core members of violent and terrorist gangs who have committed heinous crimes or are inveterate offenders will be severely punished in accordance with the law,” those “who have committed minor crimes under the influence of religious extremism will be educated, rehabilitated and protected through vocational training, through the learning of standard Chinese language and labor skills, and acquiring knowledge of the law.”
In this manner such individuals will “rid themselves of terrorist influence, the extremist mindset, and outmoded cultural practices.”
This is not simply about preventing attacks.
It’s also a means of demonstrating to the region’s Han population that the state will ensure “security” and “stability.”
“People feel less uncomfortable,” Tom Cliff argues, “when they are told that the police on the streets are there to protect them from dangerous ‘others’, rather than to protect the state from them or other Han.”

Mass repression and the constraints of propaganda in the 21st century
Skeptics of the comparison between China’s current practices and those of the Soviet and Nazi regimes might argue that, to date, there has been no evidence of physical elimination of those detained, and that the state remains committed to integrating Uyghurs (and other Turkic Muslims) into Chinese society.
These two counter-arguments do not invalidate the comparison, however.
The purpose of the “re-education” centers and the discourse that has developed around them clearly overlap with both the Soviet and Nazi precedents. 
The purpose of the centers echoes the Soviet focus on the gulag’s potential to “reforge” enemies through labor, married with the Nazis’ racialized conception of political and social deviancy in determining who should be “re-educated.”
The counter-narratives that Beijing has deployed to combat international criticism also shed further light on the three regimes’ thinking about social control.
First, these narratives play to what have become the defining characteristics of the state’s discourse with respect to the Uyghurs and East Turkestan: that a deviant religious extremism is inherent to Uyghur identity. 
It can only be overcome through “education” and assimilation into prevailing Chinese culture.
Here, there’s a crucial contrast to be drawn with Stalin’s gulag and Hitler’s concentration camps.
As Richard Overy notes, these were products of binary ideologies of belonging and exclusion.
They were conceived of as instruments of “ideological warfare” aimed at the “redemptive destruction of the enemy.” 
For Beijing, however, the Uyghur (and other Turkic Muslim minorities) are still integral parts of the Chinese nation (zhonghua minzu).
The re-education endeavor, James Leibold argues, emerges as a means of standardizing behavior to achieve a cohesive, state-sanctioned national identity.
Unlike the Soviet and Nazi precedents, Beijing’s camps appear to be designed to facilitate the destruction of Uyghur culture rather than physical destruction of individuals.
This, of course, is cold comfort to the Uyghur people.
Second, China’s propaganda offensive, largely externally-oriented, demonstrates clear parallels with Soviet and Nazi attempts to deflect international criticism by presenting misleading and falsified accounts of the detention facilities. 
But here, too, there is an important difference: Beijing has not succeeded in deceiving the international community. 
Indeed, it is undertaking this propaganda effort in an environment in which, paradoxically, innovations in surveillance and data collection technologies enhance the state’s capacity to monitor and control individuals while also helping reveal it to the outside world.
China has sought to ensure the “comprehensive supervision” of East Turkestan with the “Skynet” electronic surveillance system in major urban areas; GPS trackers in motor vehicles; facial recognition and iris scanners at checkpoints, train stations, and gas stations; collection of biometric data for passports; and mandatory apps to cleanse smartphones of potentially subversive material.
Yet, the Chinese state’s own internet records of contract bids for construction of detention facilities, advertisements recruiting new public security personnel to man them, and open-source satellite imagery have enabled international media and researchers to expose the full scope of Beijing’s systematic repression. 
Adrian Zenz, for instance, has analyzed official advertisements for security personnel to staff the camps and construction bids and tender notices for the construction of the centers online.
University of British Columbia student Shawn Zhang has similarly used information gleaned from Baidu (China’s version of Google) searches about the location of centers to plug into Google Earth to obtain satellite imagery.
The continued vigilance of such external observers can ensure that China does not follow the worst precedents of the 20th century.
Of even greater significance, however, may be the model of social control that has been implemented in East Turkestan.
The fusion of the Chinese state’s technological innovation with its longstanding desire to “transform” individuals or groups who don’t conform to the prevailing orthodoxy augurs a “digital totalitarianism” defined by “a static model of centralized, one-way observation and surveillance.”
The “comprehensive supervision” implemented in East Turkestan, as Darren Byler recently detailed, not only enables the state to identify those it deems in need of “re-education” but also makes sure that those that remain outside are not only transparent citizens seen by the state but fixed in place and inherently controllable.
This model of social control suggests a significant evolution in the nature of the party-state.
The CCP under Xi Jinping, as Frank Pieke has argued, is now not simply a traditional Leninist state that has adopted technological innovations as a means of augmenting its hold on power.
It is rather a regime that has developed an innovative set of “governmental technologies” that proactively seeks to mold and direct the behavior of citizens.

He Needed a Job. China Gave Him One: Locking Up His Fellow Muslims.

China’s vast detention program for Muslims has required more and more police officers. And recruits are coming from the very ethnic groups that are being suppressed.
By Austin Ramzy

Baimurat, who lives in Kazakhstan, says he helped deliver hundreds of fellow Muslims to an indoctrination camp in China’s East Turkestan colony. “I came to regret ever coming back to China,” he said. “That choice led me into doing such awful things.”

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — The businesses he started had failed, and he had a wife and two children to support. 

So when the authorities in China’s far western East Turkestan colony offered him a job with the auxiliary police, Baimurat welcomed the good pay and benefits.
For months, he stood at roadside checkpoints, looking for people on the government’s blacklist, usually from Muslim ethnic minorities. 

As a Kazakh Muslim himself, he sometimes felt uncomfortable about his work, but he needed the money.
Then he was asked to help bring 600 handcuffed people to a new facility — and was stunned by what he saw. 

Officials called it a job training center, but it was basically a prison, with toilets and beds behind bars. One detainee was an acquaintance he barely recognized because he had lost so much weight.
Mr. Baimurat, 39, suppressed his emotions.
“There are cameras everywhere,” he recalled, “and if they see you look unhappy, you will be in trouble.”
The Chinese have detained as many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in a network of indoctrination camps across East Turkestan, provoking international condemnation. 

In doing so, they have vastly expanded the security apparatus in the sprawling, strategically important region on China’s western frontier.
This rapid buildup has relied in large part on recruitment of officers from the same ethnic minorities that the authorities have targeted, dividing communities and families while forcing people like Mr. Baimurat to confront difficult choices.

Clients of a human rights group in Almaty, Kazakhstan, that supports ethnic Kazakhs who have fled East Turkestan, where many Muslims have been detained. The photos are of family members who are still there.

In a series of recent interviews in Kazakhstan, where he and his family fled last year, Mr. Baimurat offered a rare, firsthand glimpse into the workings of East Turkestan’s security forces — and the dilemmas that many employed by them grapple with daily.
Mr. Baimurat, who goes by only one name, said he had decided to speak out because he regretted working for the police in Qitai county outside Urumqi, the regional capital. 

He also described how close he came to ending up in a camp himself.
“I feel an obligation because I have seen so many people suffering in the camps,” he said.

In several interviews, Mr. Baimurat’s description of his experience has remained consistent, with details that match those in police recruitment notices and the accounts of former camp detainees. Auxiliary police in China are sometimes hired through private contractors who give police agencies more flexibility to add and reduce staff.
Since going public last month, Mr. Baimurat has received anonymous telephone calls warning that his relatives in China would be placed into camps if he did not recant, said Serikzhan Bilash, an activist who helps ethnic Kazakhs from East Turkestan.
Mr. Baimurat immigrated to Kazakhstan in 2009, but returned to East Turkestan a few years later, to be closer to family. 

After businesses he opened selling fruit and horse meat, a Kazakh specialty, failed, he joined the police in 2017, he said, earning a good salary — about $700 a month and decent benefits.

Serikzhan Bilash, who runs the Almaty rights group, says his clients do not bear Mr. Baimurat ill will for working for East Turkestan’s security forces. “Nobody blames him because he had no choice,” he said.

His tasks included examining travelers’ vehicles and IDs at police checkpoints on major roads.
He focused on people on government watch lists, searching their mobile phones for content considered subversive.
In particular, officers were told to look for images of the deadly ethnic riots in Urumqi in 2009, Mr. Baimurat said.
The authorities responded to that rioting with a security crackdown, which intensified after deadly attacks in 2013 and 2014 were blamed on Uighur separatists who embrace radical Islam.
The government appointed a new regional leader in 2016 who tightened controls and blanketed East Turkestan with surveillance.
That was when recruitment of auxiliary officers like Mr. Baimurat took off, according to James Leibold of La Trobe University in Australia and Adrian Zenz of the European School of Culture and Theology in Germany.
By 2017, East Turkestan’s police force was more than five times the size it had been a decade earlier, according to a forthcoming paper by Mr. Zenz and Mr. Leibold.
The government recruited ethnic minorities in particular, part of an effort to address simmering grievances by providing jobs.
Decades of migration by Han, China’s dominant ethnic group, have transformed East Turkestan, fueling Uighur anxieties.
Uighurs, once the majority, are 46 percent of the region’s 22 people million people, Han are 40 percent and Kazakhs 7 percent, according to government estimates.

Volunteers for the rights group in Almaty, called Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights, prayed before having dinner together.

The Chinese government has hoped that economic development in the resource-rich region would ease tensions.
But many Uighurs and Kazakhs complain they have been left out of growth and face discrimination in hiring, along with stifling restrictions on their practice of Islam, their cultures and their languages.
Chinese officials quoted in state media have praised the contributions of minority police officers.
But those who join the security forces are often viewed with suspicion by both the authorities and their own communities.
“Some of them are typical degenerate traitors to their ethnic group,” said Dilxat Raxit, a Uighur activist in Germany.
“Some of them have consciences but wear the uniform for the sake of their own and their families’ safety.”
Tahir Imin, a Uighur activist in Washington, said four relatives of his worked as police officers in East Turkestan only because there were few good jobs for Uighurs.
“There are big problems between Uighur police and ordinary people,” he said.
“People hate them and consider them as traitors, call them dogs of Chinese.”
Mr. Bilash, the Kazakh activist, said ethnic Kazakhs who fled East Turkestan do not hold Mr. Baimurat’s work for the police against him.

Almaty’s city center. Mr. Baimurat said he knelt down in thanks after crossing the border from Xinjiang into Kazakhstan.

“Nobody blames him because he had no choice,” Mr. Bilash said.
Within the police force, Mr. Baimurat said, officers like him were scrutinized for signs of political disloyalty.
He said he was required to attend regular political indoctrination meetings and memorize quotes by Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
Minority officers were prohibited from speaking anything but Chinese with each other, he added, and were punished if a word of Kazakh or Uighur slipped out.
The worst experience, he said, was bringing people to the internment camp.
The government presents the camps as part of a vocational training campaign that steers Muslims away from religious extremism and has halted violence.
Former inmates, however, say the authorities hold people without charge and force them to renounce their religious beliefs.
Evidence has also emerged that the camps are operating a system of forced labor.
“I came to regret ever coming back to China,” he said.
“That choice led me into doing such awful things.”
Mr. Baimurat had another reason to lament his return: The authorities discovered he had lived in Kazakhstan and obtained citizenship there.
In recent years, the police have come to regard foreign ties as grounds for suspicion — and for sending someone to an internment camp.
Mr. Baimurat decided he had to get out.
But he and his family had handed in their Kazakh passports when they returned to China in 2013. They were trapped.
“I was so scared that my legs were trembling,” he recalled.
Eventually, a contact in another part of China, who could call Kazakhstan without drawing attention, was able to get Kazakh officials to provide temporary travel documents, he said.
At the border, the police questioned his family, including his young children, for hours before letting them through.
Back on Kazakh soil, Mr. Baimurat knelt down in thanks.
“We were so happy,” he said.
“It was like we had come out of hell.”

US clothing company drops Chinese supplier over East Turkestan labor camp fears

By James Griffiths

Hong Kong -- A US sportswear company has dropped a Chinese supplier over fears its products were produced using forced labor in concentration camps in East Turkestan.
In the past year, numerous reports from rights groups and former detainees have emerged of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims, being detained in so-called "vocational education centers" in East Turkestan.
This week, Badger Sportswear, a North Carolina-based retailer, said it would "no longer source any product" from East Turkestan-based supplier Hetian Taida. 

While Badger said Hetian Taida's current operations were "consistent with our Global Sourcing Policy" it added historical documentation was insufficient and so it was severing the relationship based on an "abundance of caution."
Additionally, the US company said it would no longer source products from "this region of China."
Reacting to the news Thursday, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang would not comment on the specific case, but said that "if this company ... cut off its trade dealings with China based on wrong information, then I believe it is such a pity for this company."

Labor camps
Badger launched an investigation into its supply line after Hetian Taida was featured in reports on Chinese state TV about the East Turkestan camps. 

A CCTV report on the camps showed lines of Uyghurs working on sewing machines and in what appeared to be a warehouse.
Interviewees spoke with gratitude of the opportunities provided by the camps, and said they would have succumbed to "extremism" if not for the government's intervention.
However, former detainees able to speak more freely have complained of being separated from their families, held for indefinite periods of time and forced to endure intensive "brainwashing" sessions, including close study of Communist Party propaganda.
Reports about the camps were initially denied by Beijing, but the government has since pivoted to a vocal defense of the policy as necessary for national security and ethnic harmony.
"Today's East Turkestan is not only beautiful but also safe and stable. No matter where they are or at what time of the day, people are no longer afraid of going out, shopping, dining and traveling," Shohrat Zakir, a high-ranking East Turkestan government official, told state-run news agency Xinhua in October.
"There is still a long way to go for southern East Turkestan to eradicate the environment and soil of terrorism and religious extremism."
Rights groups have warned of policies applied to Uyghurs extending to other Muslim groups in China, concerns which were bolstered by a meeting in Beijing this month of Chinese Islamic organizations, where they were urged "to uphold the sinicization of their religion by improving their political stance and following the Party's leadership."
This week, the Associated Press reported that more than 2,000 ethnic Kazakhs living in East Turkestan may abandon their Chinese citizenship and leave the country. 

Citing a statement from Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry, AP said those leaving China would be able to apply for citizenship or permanent residency in the neighboring country.
Kazakh Foreign Ministry representatives did not respond to multiple requests from CNN for comment.

International criticism
Increasing pressure on Muslims in China has led to a growing backlash from the Islamic world, including in countries that traditionally have strong ties with Beijing.
In December, hundreds of people protested outside the Chinese embassy in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. 

Protests have also been held in India, Bangladesh, and Turkey, which has a large Uyghur population.
Also last month, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a grouping of Muslim states, warned the situation in East Turkestan showed evidence "rising discrimination on the basis of ... religion."
The OIC "expressed concern on these disturbing reports on the treatment of Uyghur Mulsims and expressed hope that China, which has excellent bilateral relations with most OIC countries as well as the OIC, would address the legitimate concerns of Muslims around the world," it said in a statement.

Cultural Genocide

China has launched a massive campaign of cultural extermination against the Uighurs
The Washington Post

Rushan Abbas of Herndon, Va., holds a photo of her sister, Gulshan Abbas, who is among the many Uighurs detained in China. 

IN AN attempt to defend the gulag in which it has imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other Muslims in the East Turkestan colony, China has tried to rebrand concentration camps as centers for “vocational training.” 

The goal, as a state television broadcast put it, is to “rescue ignorant, backward and poor rural minorities.” 

That description encapsulates the gross bigotry with which Chinese authorities view the Uighurs, against whom they have launched a massive campaign of cultural extermination.
But accept for a moment Beijing’s description of the camps’ purpose. 

How, then, to explain the fact that not just “ignorant” peasants but also scores of the most prominent Uighur intellectuals have been sent to them? 

Are poets, professors, scientists and journalists living in East Turkestan also in need of vocational training?
According to a report in the New York Times, Uighur exiles have compiled a list of 159 intellectuals who have been detained over the past year. 

They are the propagators, curators and defenders of a culture that the regime of Xi Jinping appears determined to eradicate. 

“Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and break their origins,” concluded a state news commentary cited by the Times. 

It’s hard to read that as anything other than a declaration of genocidal intent.
Chinse spokesmen sometimes describe Uighur detainees as actual or potential "terrorists". 

But the intellectuals the Chinese government has swept up include figures who openly supported the communist regime, such as Abdulqadir Jalaleddin, an expert on medieval poetry at East Turkestan Normal University. 

Like other scholars, he wrote an open letter declaring his loyalty to the state but was detained anyway.
Up to 1.1 million people, or 11.5 percent of the Uighur population between the ages of 20 and 79, are held in the camps. 

There they are forced to renounce the Muslim religion and Uighur language, and memorize and recite Chinese characters and propaganda songs. 

The “vocational training” is actually forced labor. 

Torture and deaths are common. 

Thousands of children have been separated from their parents and placed in a separate network of orphanages.
A Canadian parliamentary report issued last month echoed others in saying that “what is happening to Turkic Muslims is unprecedented in its scale, technological sophistication and in the level of economic resources attributed by the state to the project.” 

Yet thanks to China’s growing power, global reaction has been muted. 

Muslim nations have been shamefully silent, and while some Western democracies have spoken up, the Trump administration has also largely ignored the issue.
The vacuum in Washington should be filled by Congress. 

Bipartisan legislation that would create a special coordinator to respond to the East Turkestan crisis and prepare the ground for sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the repression failed to pass the last Congress. 

It should be promptly taken up this year.

The world must stand against China’s war on religion

By Chris Smith

Muslim protesters outside China's embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Dec. 21. 

Mihrigul Tursun said she pleaded with God to end her life as her Chinese jailers increased the electrical currents coursing through her body. 

Tursun, a Muslim Uighur whose escape led her to the United States in September, broke down weeping at a Nov. 28 congressional hearing as she recounted her experience in one of China’s infamous political “ re-education centers. ”
It is an appalling story but one that is all too familiar as existential threats to religious freedom rise in Xi Jinping’s China. 

The world can’t ignore what’s happening there. 

We must all stand up and oppose these human rights violations.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party has undertaken the most comprehensive attempt to manipulate and control — or destroy — religious communities since Mao Zedong made the eradication of religion a goal of his disastrous Cultural Revolution half a century ago. 

Now Xi, apparently fearing the power of independent religious belief as a challenge the Communist Party’s legitimacy, is trying to radically transform religion into the party’s servant, employing a draconian policy known as sinicization.
Under sinicization, all religions and believers must comport with and aggressively promote communist ideology — or else.
To drive home the point, religious believers of every persuasion are harassed, arrested, jailed or tortured. 

Only the compliant are left relatively unscathed.
Bibles are burned, churches destroyed, crosses set ablaze atop church steeples and now, under Xi, religious leaders are required to install facial-recognition cameras in their places of worship. 

New regulations expand restrictions on religious expression online and prohibit those under age 18 from attending services.
Government officials are also rewriting religious texts — including the Bible — that remove content unwanted by the atheist Communist Party, and have launched a five-year sinicization plan for Chinese Protestant Christians.
These efforts have taken a staggering human toll. 

In recent months, more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims in the East Turkestan colony have been detained, tortured and forced to renounce their faith. 

The U.S. government is investigating recent reports that ethnic minorities in internment camps are being forced to produce goods bound for the United States.
Yet, despite this anti-religion campaign, the Vatican has shown a disturbing lack of alarm concerning these threats and, instead, appears to be seeking a form of accommodation. 

In September, Vatican officials signed a “provisional agreement” that essentially ceded to the Chinese government the power to choose — subject to papal review — every candidate for bishop in China, which has an estimated 10 million to 12 million Catholics.
Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a retired bishop of Hong Kong, in September called the deal “a complete surrender” by the Vatican and an “incredible betrayal” of the faith.
At a congressional hearing I chaired in September, Tom Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, testified that the government-controlled body charged with carrying out the policy, the Catholic Patriotic Association, had drafted an implementation document containing the following passage: “The Church will regard promotion and education on core values of socialism as a basic requirement for adhering to the Sinicization of Catholicism. It will guide clerics and Catholics to foster and maintain correct views on history and the nation.”
One can hope that Beijing has made concessions to the church that have yet to be revealed. 

Initial reports are less than promising. 

Since the agreement was reached, underground priests have been detained, Marian shrines destroyed, pilgrimage sites closed, youth programs shuttered, and priests required to attend reeducation sessions in at least one province.
The Vatican should reconsider its arrangement with the Chinese government. 

But what can be done more generally in response to Xi’s war on religion? 

The United States and several European countries have condemned it, but any nation that values freedom of religion should unite in denouncing China’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs, Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong practitioners. 

In particular, Muslim-majority countries, strangely muted regarding the persecution of Muslim Uighurs, must protest these abuses even at the risk of endangering the benefits from China’s “Belt and Road”infrastructure projects.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and I have urged the Trump administration to use Global Magnitsky Act sanctions to target Chinese officials responsible for egregious human rights abuses. 

We have sought expanded export controls for police surveillance products and sanctions against businesses profiting from the forced labor or detention of Uighurs. 

We have also introduced the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2018 to provide the administration with new tools to comprehensively address the abuse.
The United States must lead the way in letting the Chinese Communist Party know that taking a hammer and sickle to the cross and enslaving more than 1 million Uighurs in an effort to erase their religion and culture are destructive, shameful acts that will not be tolerated by the community of nations.

China's Final Solution

US Sportswear Traced To Chinese Concentration Camps 

Chinese authorities are forcing detained Uighurs and Kazakhs to work in factories

AP

HOTAN, China — Barbed wire and hundreds of cameras ring a massive compound of more than 30 dormitories, warehouses and workshops in China’s far west. 

Dozens of armed officers and a growling Doberman stand guard outside.
Behind locked gates, men and women are sewing sportswear that end up on U.S. college campuses and sports teams.
This is one of a growing number of internment camps in the East Turkestan colony, where one million Muslims are detained, forced to give up their language and their religion and subject to political indoctrination. 

Now, the Chinese government is also forcing some detainees to work in manufacturing and food industries. 

Some of them are within the internment camps; others are privately owned, state-subsidized factories where detainees are sent once they are released.
The Associated Press has tracked recent, ongoing shipments from one such factory inside an internment camp to Badger Sportswear, a leading supplier in Statesville, North Carolina. 

The shipments show how difficult it is to stop products made with forced labor from getting into the global supply chain, even though such imports are illegal in the U.S. 

Badger CEO John Anton said Sunday that the company would source sportswear elsewhere while it investigates.
In this image from undated video footage run by China’s CCTV, Muslim trainees work in a garment factory at the Hotan Vocational Education and Training Center in Hotan, East Turkestan, northwest China.

Chinese authorities say the camps, which they call training centers, offer "free vocational training" for Uighurs, Kazakhs and others, mostly Muslims, as part of a plan to bring minorities into “a modern civilized” world and eliminate poverty in East Turkestan. 

They say that people in the centers have signed "agreements" to receive "vocational training".
The East Turkestan Propaganda Department did not respond to a faxed request for comment. 

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman accused the foreign media Monday of making “many untrue reports” about the "training" centers, but did not specify when asked for details.
However, a dozen people who either had been in a camp or had friends or family in one told the AP that detainees they knew were given no choice but to work at the factories. 

Most of the Uighurs and Kazakhs, who were interviewed in exile, also said that even people with professional jobs were retrained to do menial work.
Payment varied according to the factory. 

Some got paid nothing, while others earned up to several hundred dollars a month — barely above minimum wage for the poorer parts of East Turkestan. 

A person with firsthand knowledge of the situation in one county estimated that more than 10,000 detainees — or 10 to 20 percent of the internment population there — are working in factories, with some earning just a tenth of what they used to earn before. 

The person declined to be named out of fear of retribution.
In this Dec. 3, 2018, photo, a police station is seen inside the Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center at the Kunshan Industrial Park in Artux in China’s East Turkestan colony.

A former reporter for East Turkestan TV in exile said that during his monthlong detention last year, young people in his camp were taken away in the mornings to work without compensation in carpentry and a cement factory.
“The camp didn’t pay any money, not a single cent,” he said, asking to be identified only by his first name, Elyar, because he has relatives still in East Turkestan. 

“Even for necessities, such as things to shower with or sleep at night, they would call our families outside to get them to pay for it.”
Rushan Abbas, a Uighur in Washington, D.C., said her sister is among those detained. 

The sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, was taken to what the government calls a "vocational center", although she has no specific information on whether her sister is being forced to work.
“American companies importing from those places should know those products are made by people being treated like slaves,” she said. 

“What are they going to do, train a doctor to be a seamstress?”
In this Dec. 9, 2018 photo, Orynbek Koksebek, a former detainee in a Chinese internment camp, holds up a phone showing a state television report about what Beijing calls “vocational training centers” for a photo in a restaurant in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Koksebek says that shortly before he was released from the camp in April, the camp’s director strode into his class and told them they would soon be opening a new factory, and that detainees would be required to work and taught how to cook, sew, and repair cars.

The predominantly Muslim Uighur and Kazakh ethnic minorities in China live mostly in the East Turkestan region bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a legacy dating to ancient traders on the Silk Road. 

In recent decades, violent attacks by Uighur militants have killed hundreds and prompted the Chinese government to blanket East Turkestan with stifling security.
About two years ago, authorities launched a vast detention and re-education campaign. 

They also use checkpoints, GPS tracking and face-scanning cameras for surveillance of ethnic minorities in the region. 

The slightest perceived misstep can land someone in the internment camps.
Men and women in the complex that has shipped products to Badger Sportswear make clothes for privately-owned Hetian Taida Apparel in a cluster of 10 workshops within the compound walls. Hetian Taida says it is not affiliated with the internment camps, but its workforce includes detainees.
In this Dec. 6, 2018, photo, Nurbakyt Kaliaskar, the wife of a sheep herder, holds up a picture of her daughter, Rezila Nulale, and her graduation certificate, at an office of an advocacy group for ethnic Kazakhs born in China in Almaty, Kazakhstan on December 6, 2018. Kaliaskar says her daughter, a college graduate who had a job in advertising, was detained in an internment camp in China’s far western colony of East Turkestan and is now being forced to make clothes for no pay.

As China faced growing international pressure about the detention camps, its state broadcaster aired a 15-minute report in October that featured a “vocational skills education and training center” in the southern East Turkestan city of Hotan.
“Terrorism and extremism are the common enemy of human civilization,” the China Central Television program began. 

In response, the report said, the East Turkestan government was using "vocational training" to solve this “global issue.”
Wu Hongbo, the chairman of Hetian Taida, confirmed that the company has a factory inside the same compound as the training center featured in the China Central Television report. 

Hetian Taida provides employment to those "trainees" who were deemed by the government to be “unproblematic,” he said, adding that the center is government-operated.
“We’re making our contribution to eradicating poverty,” Wu told the AP over the phone.
The 20 to 30 "trainees" at the factory are treated like regular employees and make up a small fraction of the hundreds of people in its workforce, he said.
"Trainees" featured in the state television report praised the Communist Party for saving them from a criminal path.
“I don’t dare to imagine what would have happened to me if I didn’t come here,” one Uighur student said. 

“The party and government found me in time and saved me. They gave me a chance to reinvent myself.”
The segment said that in addition to law and Mandarin-language classes, the "training center "collaborated with companies to give trainees practical experience. 

"Trainees" were shown hunched over sewing machines in a factory whose interior matches that of Hetian Taida’s main Hotan branch, as seen in prior Chinese media reports.
In this Dec. 3, 2018, photo, a child stands near a large screen showing photos of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping near a carpark in Kashgar in East Turkestan colony.

Police told the AP journalists who approached the compound earlier this month that they could not take photos or film in the area because it was part of a “military facility.” 

Yet the entrance was marked only by a tall gate that said it was an “apparel employment training base.”
Posters line the barbed-wire perimeter, bearing messages such as “Learn to be grateful, learn to be an upright person” and “No need to pay tuition, find a job easily.”
Nathan Ruser, a cyber-policy researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), analyzed satellite images for the AP and found that in Hetian Taida’s case, the apparel factory and the government-run "training" camp are connected by a fenced path.
“There are watchtowers throughout,” Ruser said. 

“There are clear fences between the buildings and walls that limit movement. Detainees can only access the factories area through walkways, and the entire facility is closed.”
The AP could not independently determine if any workers were allowed to come and go, or how much if anything they were paid.
At least 10 times this year shipping containers filled with thousands of men’s, women’s and youth polyester knitted T-shirts and pants were sent to Badger Sportswear, a 47-year-old athletic gear seller. The company mostly manufactures in Nicaragua and the U.S., and there is no way to tell where the products from East Turkestan specifically end up. 

But experts say supply chains are considered tainted by forced labor and modern slavery if even one item was produced by someone forced to work.
Sprinkled on the internet are clues that repeatedly tie the company to the detention camp’s sewing factory floor.
Shawn Zhang, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, noted an overlooked Hotan city social media post from February about the first batch of some 1.5 million pieces of clothing worth $400,000 heading overseas from the Hetian Taida Factory. 

In the middle of a photo of young women flashing the peace sign is Badger Sportswear’s marketing director Ginny Gasswint, who is quoted as saying she’s surprised the workers are “friendly, beautiful, enthusiastic and hardworking.”
In this Monday, Dec. 3, 2018, photo, a guard tower and barbed wire fences are seen around a facility in the Kunshan Industrial Park in Artux in East Turkestan colony. This is one of a growing number of internment camps in East Turkestan.

Badger Sportswear goes to university bookstores and sports teams large and small around the country, places like Charlotte Country Day School squash team in Charlotte, North Carolina, Rhode Island’s Coventry Little League and Hansberry College Prep in Chicago, according to its website and advertisements. 

Dozens of college bookstores advertise their gear printed on Badger Sportswear, including Texas A&M, University of Pennsylvania, Appalachian State University, University of Northern Iowa, University of Evansville and Bates College. 
However, it’s impossible to say if any particular shirt is made with forced labor.
All the teams and schools that responded to the AP condemned forced labor.
Badger chief executive Anton said Sunday that his company has sourced products from an affiliate of Hetian Taida for many years. 

He said about a year ago, the affiliate opened a new factory in western China. 

Anton confirmed Badger Sportswear officials visited the factory and have a certificate that the factory is certified by social compliance experts.
“We will voluntarily halt sourcing and will move production elsewhere while we investigate the matters raised,” he said.
Badger Sportswear was acquired by New York investment firm CCMP Capital Advisor in August 2016. 

Since then, CCMP has acquired three more team sportswear companies, which they are managing under the umbrella of Founder Sport Group.
In recent years, Badger imported sportswear — jerseys, T-shirts, workout pants and more — from Nicaragua and Pakistan. 

But in April this year, it began importing 100 percent polyester T-shirts and pants from Hetian Taida Apparel, according to U.S. customs data provided by ImportGenius, which analyzes consumer shipments. 

The address on the shipping records is the same as for the detention camp.
The U.S. and United Nations say forced labor is a type of modern slavery, and that items made by people being exploited and coerced to work are banned from import to the U.S.
It’s unclear whether other companies also export products made by forced labor in East Turkestan to the U.S., Europe and Asia. 

The AP found two companies exporting to the U.S. that share approximately the same coordinates as places experts have identified as internment camps, and Chinese media reports mention “training” there. 

New Jersey Republican Congressman Chris Smith, a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, called on the Trump Administration Monday to ban imports from Chinese companies associated with detention camps.
“Not only is the Chinese government detaining over a million Uyghurs and other Muslims, forcing them to revoke their faith and profess loyalty to the Communist Party, they are now profiting from their labor,” said Smith. 

“U.S. consumers should not be buying and U.S. businesses should not importing goods made in modern-day concentration camps.”
Rushan Abbas, 51, of Herndon, Va., holds a photo of her sister, Gulshan Abbas, Monday, Dec. 17, 2018, in Washington. Rushan Abbas, a Uighur in Washington, D.C., said her sister is among the many Uighurs detained. The sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas was taken to what the government calls a vocational center, although she has no specific information on whether her sister is being forced to work.

The detention camp system is part of China’s increasingly stringent state security under Xi Jinping. Some detainees told AP earlier this year about beating, solitary confinement and other punishments if they do not recite political songs, names and phrases. 

The AP has not been given access to these facilities despite repeated attempts to get permission to visit.
Not all the camps have forced labor. 

Many former detainees say they were held in facilities that didn’t have any manufacturing equipment and focused solely on political indoctrination.
“They didn’t teach me anything. They were brainwashing me, trying to make us believe how great China is, how powerful it is, how developed its economy is,” said Kairat Samarkan, a Kazakh citizen who said he was tortured with a metal contraption that contorts your body before being released in February after he tried to kill himself.
Interviewees described a wave of factory openings earlier this year. 

Ex-detainee Orynbek Koksebek said that shortly before his release in April, the director strode into his class and announced that a factory would be built in the camp. 

Koksebek, who cannot speak Mandarin, listened to a policeman as he translated the director’s words into Kazakh for the roughly 90 women and 15 men in the room.
“We’re going to open a factory, you’re going to work,” Koksebek recalled him as saying. 

“We’ll teach you how to cook, how to sew clothes, how to fix cars.”
This fall, months after Koksebek’s release, news began trickling into Kazakhstan that the Chinese government was starting forced labor in internment camps and would transfer some detainees out into gated, guarded factories. 

The workers must live in dormitories on factory grounds. 

Contact with family ranges from phone calls or in-person visits, to weekends at home under police surveillance.
In October, Chinese authorities acknowledged the existence of what they called "vocational training centers". 

State media published an interview with Shohret Zahir, the governor of East Turkestan, saying that “some trainees” were nearly done with their “courses.”
“We will try to achieve a seamless connection between school teaching and social employment, so that after finishing their courses, the trainees will be able to find jobs and earn a well-off life,” Zahir said.
The forced labor program goes along with a massive government initiative to develop East Turkestan’s economy by constructing enormous factory parks. 

Another internment camp the AP visited was inside a factory compound called Kunshan Industrial Park, opened under the national anti-poverty push. 

A local propaganda official, Chen Fang, said workers inside made food and clothes.
A hospital, a police station, smokestacks, dormitories and a building with a sign that read “House of Workers” could be seen from outside the surrounding barbed wire fencing. 

Another section resembled a prison, with guard towers and high walls. 

The AP did not track any exports from Kunshan to the U.S.
In this Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018, photo, residents pass by the entrance to the “Hotan City apparel employment training base” where Hetian Taida has a factory in Hotan in East Turkestan colony.

Many of those with relatives in such camps said their loved ones were well-educated with high-paying jobs before their arrest, and did not need a poverty alleviation program. 

Nurbakyt Kaliaskar, a sheepherder’s wife in Kazakhstan, said her daughter, Rezila Nulale, 25, was a college graduate with a well-paid advertising job in Urumqi, the capital of East Turkestan, where she lived a typical urban lifestyle with a computer, a washing machine and an apartment in the city center.
Then last August, after returning from a visit to her family across the border in Kazakhstan, Nulale vanished. 

She didn’t answer phone calls and stopped showing up to work.
Four months later a stranger contacted Kaliaskar online and confirmed her fear: her daughter had been detained for “political training.” 

The next spring, she said she fainted when two cases of her daughter’s clothes were delivered to her home in Kazakhstan.
Last month, Kaliaskar got word via a friend who knows the family that Nulale was working in a factory next to the camp where she had been detained. 

The friend had heard from Kaliaskar’s brother, who had visited Nulale, bringing medicine for an injured hand.
Kaliaskar learned her daughter wasn’t being paid and had to meet a daily quota of three articles of clothing. 

She couldn’t leave. 

Her uncle thought she looked pale and thin.
“They say they’re teaching her to weave clothes. But the thing is, she’s well educated and had a job,” said Kaliaskar. 

“What’s the point of this training?”
A former detainee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect himself and his family members, said other detainees from his camp also had been forced into jobs at factories far away. They were taken to a government office and handed labor contracts for six months to five years in a distant factory, which they were required to sign.
If they ran from the factories, they were warned, they’d be taken straight back to the camps for “further education.”
In this file image from undated video footage run by China’s CCTV, Muslim trainees work in a garment factory in the Hotan "Vocational Education and Training Center" in Hotan, East Turkestan.

“I never asked the government to find work for my husband,” said Mainur Medetbek, whose husband did odd repair jobs before vanishing into a camp in February during a visit to China from their home in Kazakhstan.
She has been able to glean a sense of his conditions from monitored exchanges with relatives and from the husband of a woman who is in the same camp. 

He works in an apparel factory and is allowed to leave and spend the night with relatives every other Saturday. 

Though she’s not certain how much her husband makes, the woman in his camp earns 600 yuan (about $87) a month, less than half the local minimum wage and far less than what Medetbek’s husband used to earn.
Since her husband was detained, Medetbek and her children have had no reliable source of income and sometimes go hungry. 

The ordeal has driven her to occasionally contemplate suicide.
“They say it’s a factory, but it’s an excuse for detention. They don’t have freedom, there’s no time for him to talk with me,” she said. 

“They say they found a job for him. I think it’s a concentration camp.”