New leak reveals secrets of China’s notorious Xinjiang camps

According to a newly leaked document from the Xinjiang camps, China is tracking every family and every movement of Muslim minority Uighurs.
The document shows that Chinese authorities are using high-tech surveillance to keep track of identities, locations and habits of individual Uighurs. It reveals that people have been arrested for growing beards, fasting, having “too many” children, applying for a passport, or even clicking on a link to a foreign website.
According to a newly leaked document from the Xinjiang camps, China is tracking every family and movement of the Uyghurs, the region’s largest Muslim indigenous minority.
The document shows that China’s intelligence services are using high-tech surveillance methods to keep track of the identities, locations, and habits of individual Uyghurs. The leaks also reveal that people have been arrested for growing beards, fasting, having “too many” children, applying for a passport, or even clicking on a link to a foreign website.
The Chinese Communist Party has for the last three years forced the Uyghur community into re-education camp in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in China that borders the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Beijing has labelled the camps as “help centres”, which the Communist Party claims are designed to combat religious extremism.
In November, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the first leak of classified documents revealing that detailed of China’s oppression of the Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang. The leaked documents contained a manual with instructions on how to prevent escapes, maintain secrecy about the camps’ existence, and when to let detainees see relatives or use the toilet.
According to the documents, which were guides for the camp’s guards, the staff members are banned from having personal interactions with the detainees, all doors are to be double-locked, and surveillance cameras are to remain active at all times. The inmates get points for following rules and for how well they speak Mandarin. Earning points makes it possible for the detainees, which Chinese authorities classify as “students”, to “graduate” from the camps.
The leaks also list the full names and identification numbers of more than 1,800 family members, neighbours, and friends of 311 detainees.
There are at least five official “vocational training centres” in Xinjiang. The leaked database is known as the “Karakax list”, named after the Xinjiang province county where it was compiled.