the u.s state department has said it's a
mistake for the united nations human
rights chief to visit china amid
concerns that the chinese will not allow
proper scrutiny of the state of human
rights in the country
the visit is to include the western
region of xinjiang where ethnic uighurs
most of the muslims have been unlawfully
detained and mistreated a huge
collection of data including images
linked to china's mistreatment of
uyghurs and other minorities has been
handed to the bbc now the information
was hacked from police computers and it
includes evidence of a shoot to kill
policy for anyone trying to escape our
correspondent john sudburth has the
story
these are the faces china never intended
us to see
from inside its system of mass
incarceration in xinjiang
the government has long denied its
running detention camps for uighurs
insisting instead
they are vocational schools
for willing students
the photos almost three thousand of them
show the reality of how whole swathes of
uyghur society have been swept up person
by person the oldest was 73 at the time
of her detention the youngest just 15.
the uyghurs with their turkic language
islamic traditions and roots in a region
with a history of separatism and
violence have long faced cycles of
tightening government control
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and with mounting criticism over the
camps the authorities have taken
journalists on tours showing them wiegas
celebrating their culture and they say
being guided away from extremism
but it's a narrative undermined by the
tens of thousands of files passed to the
bbc
one set of documents described the
guarding of this camp just outside the
city of kashgar with armed police
stationed at all the main buildings and
with each watchtower guarded by two
officers equipped with sniper rifles and
machine guns
inside lessons are watched over by
police carrying shields batons and
handcuffs
and the documents describe the response
to students who attempt to escape if
warning shots are ignored the orders
clear shoot them dead yes this is
classified internal government
information the files said to have been
hacked from police computer servers in
xinjiang by a source whose identity
remains unknown were first passed to dr
adrian zens a xinjiang scholar who in
turn shared them with the bbc you have
police officers in heavy riot gear
standing next to some of the men some of
the men have their arms in a funny
position
as if they were handcuffed so this is
really very powerful about the image
material and i was looking through these
images on my laptop in the living room i
had to get up
and go somewhere else and take a break
i was overwhelmed
the hacked files also contain hundreds
of spreadsheets row upon row of
draconian jail sentences often targeting
expressions of islamic faith as a
parallel method alongside the camps for
detaining uyghurs on mass
just for growing a beard tersen kadir
was sentenced to 16 years in jail his
chosen expression of uyghur identity
forcibly removed many others have been
jailed for listening to illegal
religious lectures including tersen
memphimen and ashigal turgan the
documents don't say whether their
daughters have been sent like so many
others to the state-run boarding schools
built alongside the camps
the data can be verified
shown to contain real people
has not seen his wife and children since
he left xinjiang in 2017. yet a search
of the hacked files found this see the
date
a photo of his wife
sentenced the documents say to 16 years
in prison for a vague offence that
appears time and again gathering a crowd
to disturb the social order
you can see how her spirit is broken
knew his eldest son had been jailed but
the database tells him for how long 15
years
for terrorism offences although as
evidence only his son's devout islamic
faith is listed
the chinese foreign ministry spokesman
wang wenbin responded to our reporting
describing it as simply the latest
anti-china falsehood and an attempt to
smear china with rumors and lies
xinjiang is stable prosperous and the
people have happy lives
but there's been no attempt to address
the evidence itself which includes these
images from deep within the system
further evidence of the harsh detention
and indoctrination of a people not for
what they've done but for who they are
john sudworth bbc news