Leaked Documents Reveal The Horror Happening Inside Chinese Internment Camps

If you get all of your ideas about the world from mainstream media, it’s understandable to come to the conclusion that there’s no place on earth more discriminatory, racist, hellish, and evil than the United States of America.

Reality check: Yes there is.

You may be aware of China’s forced organ harvesting of spiritual minorities. You’ve probably heard of the million+ Chinese Muslims interned in “re-education” camps. I don’t know how to be cheeky and sassy about things so shocking and devastating, so here’s a puppy to help you get through it before we dig into some recent documents.

403 pages of leaked documents show the exact procedures that Chinese authorities have used to abduct and imprison Muslim families in Xinjiang. The papers indicate how these people are being interned and how they kept the camps secret for so long, among other things; perhaps one of the most heartbreaking and harrowing details to come out is the scripts for when students return from college abroad to find their families missing.

“They’re in a training school set up by the government,” was to be the answer to students asking what had happened to their families. If the student continued to ask questions, authorities were to tell them that while their relatives were not criminals, they couldn’t leave the “schools.”

Authorities would then threaten the students by saying their relatives could be detained longer or shorter depending on the student’s actions.

“I’m sure that you will support them, because this is for their own good and also for your own good,” authorities would say.

The Times also reported the documents suggested Chinese authorities “were directed to tell people who complained to be grateful for the Communist Party’s help and stay quiet” even as students questioned how their tuition would be paid and who would plant crops.

Basically, the camps depend on intimidation, brute force, and torture to operate, and the communist government of China has all of the above in abundance. And now we know straight from the horse’s mouth that:

• President Xi Jinping, the party chief, laid the groundwork for the crackdown in a series of speeches delivered in private to officials during and after a visit to Xinjiang in April 2014, just weeks after Uighur militants stabbed more than 150 people at a train station, killing 31. Mr. Xi called for an all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” using the “organs of dictatorship,” and showing “absolutely no mercy.”

• Terrorist attacks abroad and the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan heightened the leadership’s fears and helped shape the crackdown. Officials argued that attacks in Britain resulted from policies that put “human rights above security,” and Mr. Xi urged the party to emulate aspects of America’s “war on terror” after the Sept. 11 attacks.

• The internment camps in Xinjiang expanded rapidly after the appointment in August 2016 of Chen Quanguo, a zealous new party boss for the region. He distributed Mr. Xi’s speeches to justify the campaign and exhorted officials to “round up everyone who should be rounded up.”

• The crackdown encountered doubts and resistance from local officials who feared it would exacerbate ethnic tensions and stifle economic growth. Mr. Chen responded by purging officials suspected of standing in his way, including one county leader who was jailed after quietly releasing thousands of inmates from the camps.

   

Communism is evil and the Chinese government needs to be held accountable for its crimes against humanity. And, with tragedies and atrocities like this happening in real time, it’s time we stop calling democratically elected leaders “Nazis” just because we don’t like them.