Thousands of Uighur children appear to have been left without parents as their mothers or fathers were forced into Chinese internment camps, prison and other detention facilities, according to evidence from government documents in Xinjiang.
Records compiled by officials in southern Xinjiang and analysed by the researcher Adrian Zenz indicate that in 2018 more than 9,500 mostly Uighur children in Yarkand county were classified either as experiencing “single hardship” or “double hardship” depending on if one or both parents were detained.
The files, part of a cache of documents downloaded in the summer of 2019 from online networks used by local officials, showed that all the children had at least one parent in prison, detention or a “re-education” centre. No Han Chinese children were on the list.
Zenz said: “Beijing’s strategy to subdue its restive minorities in Xinjiang is shifting away from internment and towards mechanisms of long-term social control. At the forefront of this effort is a battle over the hearts and minds of the next generation.”
Q&A Who are the Uighurs?
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The Uighurs are a predominantly Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic group, primarily from China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang. They have been subject to religious and ethnic persecution by Chinese authorities, with rights groups claiming that in recent years more than 1 million people have been held in detention camps.
Having initially denied the existence of the camps, China has described them as “vocational education centres” in the face of mounting evidence in the form of government documents, satellite imagery and testimonies from escaped detainees. Satellite images have also suggested that more than two dozen Islamic religious sites have been partly or completely demolished since 2016.
In July 2019 China claimed that most of the people sent to the mass detention centres have “returned to society”, but this has been disputed by relatives of those detained. Around 1-1.5m Uighur are estimated to live overseas as a diaspora, many of whom have campaigned against the treatment of their families. China repeated these claims in December 2019, but offering no evidence of their release.
In July 2020, China’s UK ambassador denied abuse of Uighurs, despite the emergence of drone footage of hundreds of blindfolded and shackled men.
Martin Belam
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Authorities are believed to have detained more than 1 million Muslim people in re-education and other internment camps in the far north-western territory. It is part of a campaign that researchers and rights advocates say is aimed at wiping out local culture and suppressing the growth of the Uighur population. Chinese officials defend their policies in the name of poverty alleviation and counter-terrorism efforts.
Children are often placed in state orphanages or high-security boarding schools where students are closley monitored and almost all classes and interaction must be carried out in Mandarin instead of their native Uighur language.
According to Zenz’s research, a total of 880,500 children – including those whose parents are absent for other reasons – were living in boarding facilities by 2019, an increase of about 76% from 2017 as China’s internment system expanded.
The impact of the detentions on children and family structures is one of the less scrutinised aspects of China’s increasingly criticised policies in Xinjiang. Witness accounts from those outside China have revealed what experts say is a systematic policy of separating families.
If the figures from Yarkand county were extrapolated across the region up to 250,000 Uighurs under the age of 15 may have had one or both of their parents interned, according to the Economist, which first published Zenz’s findings.
Other files obtained and analysed by Zenz detailed cases of children in orphanages. One list of 85 “double hardship” students under the age of 10, whose parents were in interment centre or prison, included a one-year old living in a Yarkand orphanage. In another family, a three-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl were in an orphanage because both parents were in a “re-education” centre.
In recent years, spending on education in Xinjiang has exceeded that of security as schools emerge as a key frontline in the government’s efforts to root out the possibility of dissent. Schools often feature multi-level defensive intrusion systems, full-coverage surveillance, electric fencing and computerised patrol systems.
Despite mounting criticism of alleged abuses in Xinjiang, Beijing appears to have intensified its strategy with new reports emerging of forced labour and of forced sterilisation of Uighur women.
In a speech late last month the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, said the strategy for governing the region was “absolutely correct”.
“The sense of gain, happiness, and security among the people of all ethnic groups has continued to increase,” he said.
In response to the report, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian called Zenz a “notorious gun for hire” for the US government.
“We have said many times that the Xinjiang issue is not a matter of human rights, ethnicity and religion, but an issue of countering violence, terrorism and separatism,” he said at a regular press briefing on Friday. “This so-called suppression of Muslims and crimes against humanity is a sensational topic made up by anti-China forces for the sake of suppressing China.”
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