Why does China put Uyghurs in ‘re-education camps’?
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There are about 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in Xinjiang.

In its thought, up to a million of them have been detained in what China calls "re-education camps". Human rights groups say this is a state campaign to eradicate Uyghur identity and culture from the northwestern region. Both the UK and the US have accused China of violating human rights as reports emerged of Uyghurs being forced into internment camps, women being sterilised and the use of forced labour.

China has denied that Uyghur families are being deliberately divided. But why are they being targeted? And what happens if they flee? That is what you're going to hear about on this episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart.

To start off with, you're going to hear from Adam. He lives in Australia and left China in 2011. He spoke to the BBC a couple of years ago about his dad, who was in one of these camps and died shortly after being released. I strongly believe the Chinese government, they tortured him to death because he was 79 when he was taken away.

and he died at the age of 80. Even he was 79 years old. Apart from his age, he never had health issues. So I've got his photos before and after the camp, like before he was detained and after he was released. So I guess there's a huge difference between these two photos of him.

Let's hear more about this now from Sean Yuan. He's a journalist from the BBC's Global China Unit. Hi, Sean. Hello, hi. So first of all, who are the Uyghurs? So Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group native to Xinjiang. It is a region in northwest China. They have their own distinct culture language, which is

quite close to Turkish and their traditions as well. And with a population of about 12 million, they make up a significant portion of Xinjiang's residents, but have in the past years, as you know, faced growing political and cultural repression. Why do human rights groups say that Uyghurs have faced this level of repression? Let's go back in history for a bit. Just talk about what Xinjiang was previously and how the situation has come to what it is right now.

So historically, Xinjiang has always been a contested region. And the Chinese Communist Party, which is the ruling party of China, they view Uyghur identity and the sort of aspirations for autonomy as a threat to national unity. And you can feel that kind of government sense of threat if you go around in Xinjiang. Han Chinese, which is the majority, were streamlined into Xinjiang. And billboards, for example, written in Chinese characters,

would read stuff like all ethnic groups should clean together like pomegranate seeds. That's one of the signature things that Xi Jinping said back in the days. So for Beijing, they say it's part of China's plan to sort of revive economic development in Xinjiang. But some Uyghurs might say that their identities are being erased here.

and their rights were being ignored. So all this tension, right, sort of escalated after incidents of ethnic violence back in the 1990s and 2000s, which Beijing actually attributed to separatism, extremism, and terrorism. And in that response,

China started launching a sweeping counterterrorism campaign targeting the Uyghurs and then the rest kind of just started escalating. Tell me a bit more about this campaign and what China has been accused of. China has been accused of quite several human rights abuses against the Uyghurs. A

A lot of international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have accused China of committing crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. And governments like the ones in the US or in the UK have previously accused China of committing genocide.

And all those kind of crimes encompasses imprisonment, torture, persecution based on ethnic and religious grounds, and all those sort of things. And then, of course, after the internment acquisitions where Chinese government is accused of putting Uyghurs into those quote-unquote re-education centers, there are also claims that saying that China is using criminal justice system to prosecute Uyghurs with sort of propped up terrorism charges.

I remember the BBC went inside one of those quote-unquote re-education centres. What actually goes on inside them? Well, first of all, it's important to say that that kind of reporting is incredibly difficult because Chinese government is heavily restricting access to information, especially from foreign reporters going into Xinjiang. But from, as you said, the BBC and a lot of other media outlets have been able to gather testimonies and have been able to go on site at times.

And the conditions were as horrible as people might have imagined. According to these reports, there was forced labor, for example, in factories producing goods for global supply chains, including goods such as cotton or tomato purees, for example, according to one of the investigations that the BBC has recently done. So, and also there have been reports saying that there's forced sterilization and other measures, for

to kind of reduce Uyghurs' birth rates, and a lot of organizations have described that as genocidal as well. So all in all, that's to say that the conditions within those so-called re-education centers are in a way internment camps, and that has been used to kind of suppress the Uyghur identity.

Sean mentioned forced labour and I want to pause and expand a bit on those accusations. Xinjiang is known for its cotton. It produces about a fifth of all of the cotton in the world. Human rights campaigners say that it's picked by Uyghurs using forced labour. Because of this, some brands have removed Xinjiang cotton from their supply chains.

This has turned into a huge row in the fashion industry, with brands being boycotted or completely erased from online shopping sites in China. China denies these allegations of forced labour. Sean, back to you. What does China say in response to the allegations of human rights abuses? So far, China has repetitively denied allegations of human rights abuses. They're claiming that all those measures in Xinjiang put in place

are necessary to combat extremism or to provoke economic development. And Beijing also asserts that camps are vocational training centers aimed at reducing poverty and preventing radicalization.

And it dismisses the international criticism as biased and politically motivated. I do have to say that the economic development in Xinjiang has taken off over the past few years. And a lot of people have indeed been lifted out of poverty. But at what cost? That's what people are asking, basically. So if you're sent to one of these camps, is it like a life sentence? How long are people in there for and how do they get out?

Not necessarily life sentences. Some people stay there for a few months. Some people stay there for a few years. Again, it's really difficult to get firsthand testimonies from previous victims.

detainees or prisoners because again China restricts a lot of foreign journalists access to those people. But from what we've learned so far is that they will stay there for an extended period of time and then even if after they were released from those camps a lot of the reports seem to suggest that they are also often put under heavy surveillance and forced into labor programs.

Many are compelled to work in factories, for example, tied to global supply chains, usually under conditions resembling modern slavery, according to human rights organizations. And families are also separated. A lot of individuals would remain under the threat of redetention if they were deemed, quote unquote, untrustworthy by the government. Given those living conditions and working conditions, forced labor, camp surveillance, Sean, I'm

I would think that many Uyghurs would want to get out of China. Are they able to leave? Is there somewhere for them to go? It's such a good question because it makes sense for them to want to leave. But I think there's so many hurdles on the road of them trying to leave. First of all, China's government is making it very difficult for Uyghurs to obtain passport in the first place. And if you want to go through legal route to go to third countries, it's going to be quite impossible to travel to those places without a travel document.

But a lot of people do flee the persecution and they often risk dangerous journeys to escape. So before we go into the route where in terms of how Uyghurs escaping, it's important to point out that Xinjiang is a vast, vast land. It's the biggest region on the provincial slash autonomous region level in China. And it borders several countries, including Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

So with that in mind, I guess it's time to say that a lot of Uyghurs actually start to flee into Kazakhstan, for example, or Kyrgyzstan. And then from there, a lot of them would go to Turkey, where a lot of Uyghurs have so far claimed

and being granted asylum, and some other people would go from Central Asia, for example, and then they would go to Thailand. The reason why they choose Thailand is because that is the place where usually a lot of people will be able to board on the transit flight to go to Turkey. A lot of them do seek asylum in Turkey and also, of course, in Europe and in North America as well, where we see a lot of Uyghur activists are quite active in those regions.

The BBC recently reported on how some Uyghurs detained in Thailand are afraid of being sent back to China. Tell us more about what's been happening there. So over 300 Uyghurs fled China back in 2014. They were detained by Thai authorities near the Malaysian border.

And in 2015, which is 10 years ago now, Thailand deported 109 detainees to China against their will. And at that time, it prompted an international outcry. And then you have another group of 173 Uyghurs, mostly women and children, were later sent to Turkey. And now, with all these numbers deducted, we have about 53 Uyghurs

stuck in a Thai immigration detention center seeking asylum. And since then, five have died in detention. And what happened recently is that I think 48 people are still detained by Thai authorities and five are serving prison terms after a failed escaped attempt.

And what happened recently is that the media reports to start to emerge saying that they face imminent threat of being sent back to China again. You know, with all the things that we've said so far, being sent back to China means potentially being persecuted or even being thrown into jail and all the things that they were trying to escape back at home. So that's the reason why a lot of them now are going on hunger strike, hoping they will not be sent back to China. And also...

And after pressure from the UN and other groups, Thailand has said there are no immediate plans to send them back. But Sean, overall, is there any reason to think that things could change for Uyghurs in Xinjiang? That's the question a lot of human rights organizations and Uyghurs themselves are asking them on a daily basis. Change seems quite difficult, to be honest, but it's not impossible. There's still a lot of global attention on this. There are still international sanctions imposed.

and the advocacy coming from both Western countries and the advocacy groups within the Uyghur community outside of China. All of these things might pressure China to alter its policies. But Beijing's sensitivity towards the sovereignty issues and its strategic interest in Xinjiang make the large-scale changes unlikely, at least not in the near future. Sean, thank you so much. Of course. Thanks for having me.

So what's been done about these alleged crimes? Well, they were brought before the International Criminal Court in 2020, but the case wasn't pursued because most of the alleged crimes occurred in China and it's not a member of the ICC. However, an independent tribunal here in London concluded...

in 2021 that China did commit genocide and crimes against humanity. Its findings are not legally binding. Meanwhile, the treatment of Uyghurs continues to be a huge issue for human rights groups around the world. And that brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you so much for joining us. This is What In The World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart and we'll be back with another one tomorrow. See you then.

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