Shocking scenes in China
Uighurs shackled and blindfolded
Taken by train to who knows where
China calls them “vocational training centers”
Human rights watchers say “concentration camps”
Welcome back to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
Drone footage has emerged
from China’s Xinjiang region showing this:
A train transport of prisoners.
Police escort inmates,
who have shaved heads,
and are handcuffed and blindfolded.
The video was posted on the YouTube channel War on Fear.
It says the footage shows the quote unquote
“long-term suppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms
by the Chinese government in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.”
Xinjiang is where the UN says the Chinese regime
has locked up over 1 million Uighurs,
a mostly Muslim ethnic minority who live there.
The Chinese Communist Party says the detention facilities in Xinjiang
are actually "vocational training centers"
helping to stamp out extremism and to equip people with new job skills.
See, they’re schools, definitely not prisons.
“They are affected by religious extremism.
Our purpose is to get rid of their extremist thoughts.”
Just like in a normal job training center.
And all part of the Chinese Communist Party’s plan
to lift people out of poverty.
But human rights groups—
and Western leaders—
say these training centers are closer to concentration camps.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called
China's treatment of Uighurs
the "stain of the century,"
and that China is "home to one of the worst human rights crises of our time."
Speaking in New York on Sunday,
ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting this week,
Pompeo said Beijing's campaign in Xinjiang
isn’t about fighting “terrorism” but “erasing” its citizens.
"And further on the subject of terrorism,
I want to make clear that China's repressive campaign in Xinjiang
is not about terrorism it's about China's attempt
to erase its own citizens of Muslim faith and culture
and we call on all countries to resist
China's demands to repatriate Uighurs.”
The newly-released drone footage
appears to have been shot in August of *2018*
at a train station near the city of Korla, in Xinjiang.
Ironically, by a DJI drone made in China.
When the camera zooms in,
you can see the prisoners, sitting on the ground,
surrounded by police—shackled and blindfolded.
Again, just like in a normal job training center.
Next the prisoners are escorted off the lot
and towards waiting buses.
The video then cuts out and then...
who knows where the prisoners ended up?
Maybe it’s Shanghai Disneyland!
Or possibly a detention center.
Come to think of it, yeah, it’s probably a detention center.
Where the prisoners will be lifted out of poverty.
Nathan Ruser is a researcher
with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute
who verified the video.
He believes prisoners were taken from the Kashgar Detention Center...
to the much bigger facilities in Korla.
The red squares are full-fledged prisons.
Hard-time facilities like these
he says, are ones “where those sentenced
live out years of pre-trial detention
and then far longer in their prison sentences.”
In verifying the footage, Ruser used clues in the video—
landmarks and sun position—
to zero in on when and where it was shot.
Clues like the orientation map and the scale bar info...
then Google Earth, and bingo...
the train station west of Korla in south-east Xinjiang.
And prisoners were probably bussed
to one the 150 or so detention centers across Xinjiang.
They’ve been built at a lightning pace to handle
more than a million people who’ve been detained
since the Uighur crackdown sped up a couple years ago.
Here’s a glimpse inside one of the less restrictive facilities,
where inmates eagerly learn about Core Socialist Values...
which include “democracy,” “rule of law,”
and—most importantly—“freedom.”
I know that sounds like a joke,
but those are the actual Core Socialist Values.
But these places aren’t so bad—
say Chinese authorities.
What about *this* Uighur detention facility—
where you can see there’s pingpong
dancing
and basketball?
Turns out, that’s a video shared by the editor-in-chief
of my favorite Chinese state-run media, The Global Times.
And according to Ruser, it’s pure propaganda.
“The basketball 'courts' are merely mats
and there for propaganda purposes,’
he says, pointing to mats lifting off the ground
and to satellite imagery showing the courts
normally located at a nearby school.
After the Chinese Communist Party
could no longer deny the existence of these detention camps,
they started taking foreign journalists on supervised tours.
Here’s a BBC investigative report published in June:
“Is it your choice to be here?”
“Yes.
I had weak awareness of the law.
I was influenced by extremism and terrorism.
A policeman in my village told me
to get enrolled in school and transform my thoughts.”
Yes, that’s a totally normal thing to say about
enrolling in a *vocational* training school.
Of course, the newly surfaced drone video undercuts the narrative
that people are in these centers out of their own free will.
“If they don’t want to come, then what happens?”
“We’ve never encountered that before.
But we’d proactively guide them.”
“But isn’t a place where people have to come,
obey the rules,
stay until you allow them to leave,
sound more like a prison?
Even if it’s a prison in which you can do some art?”
“Prison?
Is there a prison where you can paint?
I don’t know what you mean by prison.
Our place is indeed a training center.”
This woman spent a year in a detention facility—
mostly in one of the tougher camps—
for the dastardly crime of having WhatsApp installed on her phone.
“They put cuffs on my legs for a week.
There were times when we were beaten.
Once I was struck with an electric baton.”
Meanwhile, Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne
has viewed the prisoner transport video
and she told News dot com that she finds it “deeply disturbing.”
She also said that “We have consistently
called for China to cease the arbitrary detention of Uighurs
and other Muslim groups.
We have raised these concerns—
and we will continue to raise them—
both bilaterally and in relevant international meetings.”
International meetings like the United Nations General Assembly
taking place this week in New York,
where President Donald Trump spoke at
the United Nations Event on Religious Freedom.
“As we speak, Jews, Christians, Muslims,
Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Yazidis,
and many other people of faith are being jailed,
sanctioned, tortured and even murdered,
often at the hands of their own government
simply for expressing their deeply-held religious beliefs.”
But it should come as no surprise
that China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman
said the US has "slandered China's policy toward Xinjiang
and grossly interfered in China's internal affairs."
And this all comes as China releases its annual white paper
about how great human rights are in China.
Other Chinese state-run media quickly picked up the white paper.
"The government says people's rights
have been improved since 1949
when the New China was founded."
But wait, how can they say human rights in China have improved,
when they’re locking up Uighurs and brainwashing them?
Easy!
They just change the definition of human rights.
See, in the United States,
the Declaration of Independence proclaims that human rights
are not granted by governments, but by God—
and they include the right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
In Communist China, though,
the Communist Party is God—
and it has endowed its people with none of those things.
But here are the “human rights” they do claim to offer:
“An array of achievements,
among them the right to food,
the elimination of absolute poverty,
improved living standards,
safe drinking water,
improved housing conditions,
more convenient public transport,
and better public health.”
I mean, what could possibly be a more important human right
than “more convenient public transport”?
Certainly not freedom of belief.
“We aim to change their religious extremist thoughts,
so they can find work after graduation.”
“We would call that brainwashing.”
“We’re not completely changing their thoughts.
We only remove the extremist elements.”
Although this year, the Chinese Communist Party
has decided to emphasize a new human right:
Living a happy life.
But how do you measure happiness?
Let’s ask the Uighurs at this vocational training school.
And if *that* doesn’t make people happy,
you can always do this to them.
So what do you think about the detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang?
Leave your comments below.
And now it’s time for me to answer a question from one of you—
a fan who supports China Uncensored
through the crowdfunding website, Patreon.
Alan Sandler asks:
“Please give me a definition of Wuumaw.
Love your program.”
Thanks.
I love my program, too.
So Wu Mao means 50 cents.
Technically, 5 ten cents.
It refers to people on the internet
who are allegedly paid 50 Chinese cents
each time they post a pro-Beijing comment
on websites, underneath videos, etc.
This is called China’s Wu Mao Dang,
a.k.a. 50-Cent Party,
or 50-Cent Army.
The term is almost a decade old.
You might see some of these kind of comments below this video—
although you can’t necessarily tell
whether that particular person was paid,
or whether he’s actually just supporting the communist party for free.
At any rate,
when I started this fundraising campaign on Patreon in 2015,
I decided to call my supporters the “China Uncensored 50-Cent Army”
as a nod to that.
Good question, Alan.
And thanks to the support of my “China Uncensored 50-Cent Army”—
the people who contribute a dollar or more per episode—
we can pay our staff,
buy the right equipment,
travel to places like Hong Kong,
and keep this show going.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.