380 Chinese Concentration Camps Identified in Eastern Turkestan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 25 – Using satellite photography, the Australian Institute for Strategic Policy has identified 380 concentration camps in Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) in which the Chinese government has incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Muslims under the guise of “political rehabilitation” centers (xjdp.aspi.org.au/explainers/exploring-xinjiangs-detention-facilities/).

            Not only do the photographs show that the facilities are organized in the way prisons typically are, but they indicate that the number of such “centers” has been increasing since they were first reported in 2017. That suggests that the number of Muslims incarcerated in them has increased as well and now exceeds one million people (turantoday.com/2020/09/380.html).

            Beijing has carried out repressions against the Muslims of Eastern Turkestan since establishing effective control there in 1949; but at least since the spring of 2017, it has been confining them in what it calls “political reeducation centers,” facilities that Canada, France, Germany and the US have called on the Chinese to close.

            International attention to this crime against humanity unfortunately has been intermittent in the West, but the existence of these camps is having serious consequences for China’s relationships with Central Asian countries, many of which have co-nationals confined in these facilities (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/03/beijings-repressive-policies-in.html).

            The Australian pictorial documentation of these camps will likely exacerbate Beijing’s problems there and possibly elsewhere, especially providing new evidence for a court case brought in London by the Uyghur World Congress that seeks a formal legal judgment against what the Chinese government has been doing.