The New York Times has received a 403-page leak of internal Chinese state documents related to the ethnic cleansing effort in Xinjiang province, which has seen the creation of more than 500 concentration camps where Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities have been subjected to torture, rape and medical experimentation.
Though it's not clear where the leaks originate from, the Times speculates that they were released by Chinese officials who are upset with the authoritarian measures and attendant human-rights abuses.
The contents of the leaks support this theory, as much of the material deals with the microeconomics of the regional Chinese officials who implemented the ethnic cleansing program. The story begins with a wave of terrorist attacks in the region in 2014, most notably a train-station stabbing attack with more than 150 victims.
This prompted an internal hard-line speech from president-for-life Xi Xinping, who argued that a virus-like contagion of Islamic extremism had infected people from the region. Xi argued that China should learn from the American hard line on terrorism and use the "organs of dictatorship" to root out Islamism, showing "absolutely no mercy."
Xi compared the political currents in the region to the independence movements in the outlying regions of the USSR in its last days, when "ideological laxity" and "spineless leadership" allowed the Soviet empire to be shattered.
In 2016, Xi's vision was supercharged by a change in regional government, when Chen Quanguo was put in charge of Xinjiang; Chen had previously been the hard-line official in charge of Tibet, and had been responsible for the systematic human rights abuses there. Read the rest
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