JUDY WOODRUFF: As we reported earlier, the
Chinese government objected today to a call
by some U.S. members of Congress to levy sanctions
on Beijing for its treatment of the Uyghur
ethnic group, who live mainly in Western China.
As Nick Schifrin reports, advocates for that
Muslim minority say Uyghurs are now being
rounded up by the hundreds of thousands.
NICK SCHIFRIN: In China's Xinjiang province,
to be a Uyghur Muslim is to be accused of
having a contagious disease.
Muslims from Xinjiang to Beijing have long
complained of state suppression.
But now they say Chinese repression is stronger
than ever.
In Xinjiang's Kashgar, where Chairman Mao
looms over the city, Chinese police are accused
by human rights groups of creating the world's
most extensive surveillance.
Uyghurs are native to this area and have long
accused China of forced indoctrination, as
exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer put it
in a 2012 visit to Tokyo.
REBIYA KADEER, Exiled Uyghur Leader (through
translator): The Chinese government systematically
assimilates the Uyghur people, while we're
struggling for freedom and human rights.
It's a life or death struggle.
NICK SCHIFRIN: The U.S. and U.N. says that
struggle is now happening to one million Uyghurs
inside of camps seen in satellite images.
We know the camps are expanding thanks in
part to a blog by a Chinese law student at
the University of British Columbia, Shawn
Zhang, who started investigating because at
first he didn't believe the Uyghurs' accusations.
SHAWN ZHANG, University of British Columbia:
Many Chinese say they are fake news, because
they think it'd be impossible to detain so
many people.
NICK SCHIFRIN: But Zhang found government
construction project bids for what the Chinese
call reeducation camps and he cross-referenced
those to find the truth.
SHAWN ZHANG: So, I look at these locations
in the Google satellite images, and I found
there are indeed some very large detention
facilities.
NICK SCHIFRIN: In a Kashgar camp, he found
a construction boom, and could even identify
which structures were -- quote -- "teaching
buildings."
SHAWN ZHANG: You can clearly see the extension
of the detention facilities, especially in
the education camp.
I think it likely doubled or even tripled
its size in the past few months.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Radio Free Asia journalist
Gulchehra Hoja told Congress last month her
family's in camps where Uyghurs are reportedly
subject to torture and indoctrination.
GULCHEHRA HOJA, Radio Free Asia: I learned
in February that my aunt's cousins, their
children, more than 20 people had been swept
up by authorities in the same day.
NICK SCHIFRIN: That hearing was called by
Senator Marco Rubio.
Yesterday, he and 16 other Senate and House
members sent the State and Treasury Departments
a letter accusing China of arbitrary detention,
torture and egregious restrictions on religious
practice and culture and calling for sanctions
on senior Chinese officials.
Today, China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
said Chinese minorities have freedom of religion,
and the U.S. had no right to criticize.
HUA CHUNYING, Spokeswoman, Chinese Ministry
of Foreign Affairs (through translator): China's
ethnic minority policies and the rights and
equality ethnic minorities enjoy are even
stronger than in the United States.
NICK SCHIFRIN: China says it's responding
to what it calls Uyghur terrorism and a Uyghur
separatist movement.
In Xinjiang, many Uyghurs seek an independent
homeland and clash with police.
China says it's trying to maintain stability
and doesn't detain anyone arbitrarily.
For more on this, we're joined by Omer Kanat,
executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights
Project, and Jim Millward, a professor of
history at Georgetown University.
Thanks very much to you both.
OMER KANAT, Director, Uyghur Human Rights
Project: Thank you.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Omer Kanat, the Chinese call
these vocational training camps.
Are they vocational training camps?
OMER KANAT: Yes, that's what they say.
It's not vocational centers.
It is actual jails.
There are a lot of evidence that shows that,
at the end of the day, they are jails.
We have victims.
We have witnesses.
We have victims who spent several months,
later released from the -- I call it concentration
camp.
And they already told their stories in how
people are being tortured in these so-called
vocational centers, how the people are insulted,
how the people are humiliated, how the people
are deprived from food, from sleep, in order
to obey what the Chinese guards and the Chinese
officials ask them to do.
What they have asked them to do, what they
have forced them to do is to -- to denounce
their religion, first of all, denounce their
culture, denounce their even traditions.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Jim Millward, there's another
line that the Chinese have.
They say that they -- there's a serious threat
in this area from militants, from separatists.
There have been terrorist attacks in this
area.
Are the Chinese actually worried about stability?
And aren't they right to worry about stability?
JAMES MILLWARD, Georgetown University: Well,
they're certainly worried about stability.
And to a certain extent, they're right to
worry about various kinds of unrest.
What the Chinese do is refer to all violence,
any kinds of action or dissent from people
as terrorism.
And, actually, it runs the gamut from small-scale,
into rural uprisings, maybe farmers with their
agricultural tools attacking a police station,
to what we would call race riots.
So, stability is a concern.
The problem is, their reaction to it, this
response to it with these camps is indiscriminate
and it's excessive.
It's way beyond anything that good policy
would dictate as a response to this kind of
relatively low-level unrest.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Is this about economic concerns
from China and China's Belt and Road plan?
JAMES MILLWARD: Yes, this is really Xi Jinping,
President Xi Jinping's sort of signature contribution,
and he's very much thinking about his legacy
in terms of this.
It's drawn on the map as rail lines and roads
and the belt across Central Asia.
But I think we really should understand that
is much broader than that.
It really takes in all of Chinese foreign
policy all around the world, loans, some investment,
economic involvement all over.
So if we think of it simply as a rail line
running from Xinjiang to Central Asia, then
you think, oh, well, maybe they're worried
about Uyghurs doing some things to that rail
line.
But that's a very small part of what the entire
Belt and Road is.
And, moreover, China has security of that
key infrastructure in Xinjiang very well under
control.
There's no real danger to this.
There's a recent editorial from the Chinese
newspaper Global Times, which reflects state
policy.
And it says that there was a danger of Xinjiang
becoming China's Syria or China's Libya, and,
therefore, these harsh measures were necessary
in order to prevent that from happening.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Maintain stability.
JAMES MILLWARD: To maintain the ability, to
prevent Xinjiang from becoming Syria or Libya.
That's ridiculous.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
If you looked at any of the securitization
of the region, there are police with boots
on the ground.
They have facial recognition cameras everywhere.
There's no danger of littering, practically.
OMER KANAT: It doesn't have anything to do
with the fight against terrorism, fight against
extremism.
It's a war against a people, to eliminate
a people, eliminate an ethnic group.
So it doesn't have anything to do with the
-- with the terrorism.
You cannot -- it's not an excuse for Chinese
government, so to say that we are fighting
against terrorism.
More than one million Uyghurs are in actual
jails in detention center.
And more than two million people are in political
and cultural indoctrination centers.
NICK SCHIFRIN: And, Jim Millward, quickly,
in the time we have left.
Uyghurs have been targeted before.
Minorities have been targeted before.
But is this on a scale that we haven't seen?
JAMES MILLWARD: So, what we're seeing now
is really unprecedented as a human rights
atrocity in China.
Not since the Cultural Revolution, perhaps,
not since the Tiananmen incidents of 1989
has there been anything really this serious
that I think the world should pay attention
to.
And it's really very sad, because it may sound
funny to say this, but China is better than
this.
China has a tradition of multiculturalism,
believe it or not.
It's not liberal, Western-style multiculturalism,
but they have a way of managing different
groups within one state.
And if they would stick to that, they could
provide an example of managing diversity,
albeit within an authoritarian context that,
in some ways, measures up to some of the ways
we manage diversity in the West, because there
are problems -- these are difficult problems
everywhere.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Jim Millward, Omer Kanat, thank
you very much.
JAMES MILLWARD: Thank you.
OMER KANAT: Thank you.
