China denies maltreatment of Muslims in Camps

For the first Time a representative of China's Communist party has referred to the allegations that, in the Xinjiang Muslims in re-education camps were interned. The government relies on appeasement.

Axel Dorloff, ARD Studio in Beijing

It is a Situation that in China most rare: The people's Congress in Beijing, a British Reporter gets the Chance to confront the head of the government of Xinjiang with the recent statements of the Turkish government. The had spoken, based on the political re-education camps for Muslims in Xinjiang, one of the concentration camps.

"facilities such as training boarding schools"

If all the witnesses would be in their Reports about the abuse, lies, asks Tom Cheshire from "Sky News" the second most powerful politician, Xinjiang, Shohrat Zakir. "The training centers are not what some media say," says Zakir. "There is no people will be abused or deprived of their liberty. In reality, these institutions, such as training boarding schools. Some claim, we would have something like a concentration camp or re-education camp. But this is a work of fiction, absurd and ridiculous."

play down, to appease, to deny, it is China's strategy, despite the numerous and well-documented reports on the control and re-education regime against Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang. According to Reports from Victims, journalists, scientists, Western governments, the UN and human rights organizations, up to 1.5 million Muslims in China's North-Western region of Germany are interned in Camps. Especially Uighurs, who with about ten million people, half the population in Xinjiang.

Xinjiang government chief Shohrat Zakir rejected the allegation that in his Region, Muslims are abused or locked up.

the struggle for sovereignty of interpretation

"This is China's answer to the growing international pressure in recent months," said Patrick Poon of the organization Amnesty International in Hong Kong about China's Appeasement strategy.

"The Chinese government claims, the institutions are just the people to train. But de facto they indoctrinate the ethnic minorities. They should accept that they are Chinese. But the people in the Camps are forced to the learning content. And if you refuse, ill-treatment and torture. We know from former inmates. This is very worrying, because there is no transparency at all."

After China had denied the existence of the re-education camp first, long, raging now, the struggle for sovereignty of interpretation. According to the rules for the so-called "providing de" is it allowed local authorities in Xinjiang explicitly, as extremist classified Muslims to re-educate. Detention without trial, the ideological re-education and forced behavior corrections - all of this is possible.