Chris Buckley writes for the New York Times……The Chinese government has built a vast network of re-education camps and a pervasive system of surveillance to monitor and subdue millions from Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region.Now China is also turning to an older, harsher method of control: filling prisons in Xinjiang.
Here’s the introduction to the piece
China’s Prisons Swell After Deluge of Arrests Engulfs Muslims
Arrests, trials and prison sentences have surged in Xinjiang, where Uighurs and Kazakhs also face re-education camps.
The Chinese government has built a vast network of re-education camps and a pervasive system of surveillance to monitor and subdue millions from Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region.
Now China is also turning to an older, harsher method of control: filling prisons in Xinjiang.
The region in northwest China has experienced a record surge in arrests, trials and prison sentences in the past two years, according to a New York Times analysis of previously unreported official data.
As the Chinese government pursues a “strike hard” security campaign aimed overwhelmingly at minorities in Xinjiang, the use of prisons is throwing into doubt even China’s limited protections of defendants’ rights.
Courts in Xinjiang — where largely Muslim minorities, including Uighurs and Kazakhs, make up more than half of the population — sentenced a total of 230,000 people to prison or other punishments in 2017 and 2018, significantly more than in any other period on record in decades for the region.During 2017 alone, Xinjiang courts sentenced almost 87,000 defendants, 10 times more than the previous year, to prison terms of five years or longer. Arrests increased eightfold; prosecutions fivefold.
Experts, rights advocates and exiled Uighur activists say that Chinese officials have swept aside rudimentary protections in their push. The police, prosecutors and judges in the region are working in unison to ram through convictions, serving the Communist Party’s campaign to eradicate unrest and convert the largely Muslim minorities into loyalists of the party.
Arrests, the critics said, are often based on flimsy or exaggerated charges, and trials are perfunctory, with guilty judgments overwhelmingly likely. Once sentenced, prisoners face potential abuses and hard labor in overcrowded, isolated facilities.
Read the full article https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/world/asia/xinjiang-china-uighurs-prisons.html
