Shortly before UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s visit to Xinjiang, an international media consortium published further evidence of the mass detention of Uyghurs in China.
Photos, speeches and instructions from the authorities proved that the camps are not, as the Chinese government claims, “professional training institutions”, said the Bavarian radio station involved in the research and “Spiegel” on Tuesday.
For example, the Xinjiang Police Files data set contains a previously unknown speech by the former party leader of the Xinjiang region in 2017, which said that any prisoner who even tried to escape a few steps was “closed.” shoot”.
Security forces with assault rifles can be seen in the pictures. A photo also shows a prisoner in a so-called tiger chair – a torture device in which the legs are overstretched.
The Chinese embassy in the US said the measures in Xinjiang were aimed at countering terrorist efforts and that it was not about “human rights or a religion”.
According to the announcement, the data set was leaked to the German anthropologist Adrian Zenz. This is a well-known China researcher in the USA who pointed out the alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang early on and was sanctioned by Beijing in 2021. He shared the data with a total of 14 Western media outlets.
The chairman of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with China, Reinhard Bütikofer (Greens), called for new sanctions against China to BR and “Spiegel”. The “images of horror” should lead to the European Union taking a clear position.
UN Human Rights Commissioner Bachelet is expected to visit the cities of Urumqi and Kashgar in Xinjiang on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The government in Beijing is accused of detaining more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the far western region of the country in “re-education camps”. Beijing is accused, among other things, of forced sterilization and forced labour.
