Xinjiang leak sheds new light on China’s ‘re-education’ camps

Thousands of leaked photos and official documents point to the ‘violent methods used by authorities against Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities’

A leak of thousands of photos and official documents from China's Xinjiang has shed new light on the violent methods used to enforce mass internment in the region, researchers said Tuesday.

The files, obtained by academic Adrian Zenz, were published as UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet begins a long-awaited and controversial trip to Xinjiang.

Activists say Chinese authorities have detained more than one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in a network of detention centres and prisons in the region, which Beijing has defended as training centres.

But the trove of police photographs and internal documents — sent to Mr. Zenz by an anonymous source who hacked into official databases in Xinjiang — add to evidence that the mass internments were far from voluntary, with leaked documents showing top leaders in Beijing including President Xi Jinping calling for a forceful crackdown.

The files include a 2017 internal speech by Chen Quanguo, a former Communist Party secretary in Xinjiang, in which he allegedly orders guards to shoot to kill anyone who tries to escape, and calls for officials in the region to "exercise firm control over religious believers".

A 2018 internal speech by public security minister Zhao Kezhi mentions direct orders from Xi to increase the capacity of detention facilities.

After initially denying their existence, Beijing has claimed the facilities are vocational training schools, attended voluntarily and aimed at stamping out religious extremism.