Mass internment of minorities and ‘coerced poverty reduction’

Abstract

30 | International Union Rights | 28/3-4 FOCUS | FORCED LABOUR – THE WORLD TODAY AND THE LEGACIES OF COLONIALISM AND SLAVERY Mass internment of minorities and ‘coerced poverty reduction’ In the West, there is outrage at the situation in China’s Xinjiang province. China claims that it is engaged in an attempt to better integrate members of a community that has experienced an upsurge of religious radicalisation and a project to get people into work in a region blighted by unemployment and poverty. But its methods have come under intense scrutiny. Information has emerged showing that China has constructed a vast network of detention centres, within which members of the Uygher (and other minority groups) have been interned. It appears that minorities are being detained without charge and on no clear legal basis, with further allegations of forced assimilation of a minority group. China asserts that at least some of the detainees have been convicted of extremist activity amounting to criminal offences and it is quite upfront that convicted detainees are ‘punished severely’1. But it also acknowledges that many within the detention centres are not even suspected of having committed any offence. Concerns about detention and forced assimilation have escalated to include forced labour, crimes against humanity, and even genocide. Detentions should ‘halt’ The UN’s pre-eminent minority rights body, the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), has for some years been alarmed at reports coming out of Xinjiang. It has not been impressed by China’s attempts at justification. In 2018 CERD issued a clear recommendation to ‘halt’ the detention of persons not convicted of any crime and to ‘immediately release’ those already in extralegal detention. CERD also called upon China to: Provide the number of persons held against their will in all extralegal detention facilities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in the past five years, together with the duration of their detention, the grounds for detention, the humanitarian conditions in the centres, the content of any training or political curriculum and activities, the rights that detainees have to challenge the illegality of their detention or appeal the detention, and any measures taken to ensure that their families are promptly notified of their detention2. China appears to have ignored CERD’s requests to halt detentions, and to free those detained without lawful charge, and has further failed to offer convincing answers to CERD’s other questions, arguing obtusely that there are ‘no extrajudicial detention facilities’, insisting that the what the West refers to as ‘camps’ are ‘education and training centres’, claiming to be ‘integrating preventative measures with a forceful response’, but dodging the question of the numbers detained with a clumsy attempt at fudging the issue, ‘The number of those taking part in education and training is dynamic, as people are continuously coming and going’3. ‘Coerced Poverty Reduction’ and Forced Labour China has implemented a tough security regime in the Xinjiang region and no international teams have as yet been able to conduct proper investigations into the situation. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Special Rapporteurs have been requesting approval for an official visit for some years, but China’s response has been evasive, at best. It has offered to accept a ‘friendly’ visit but says that it will not accept a ‘socalled “investigation” under the presumption of guilt’4. This stand-off has left us with a dearth of clear and objective information. But serious concerns have been raised that detention and conditions for detainees are violating human rights standards, and possibly to a very serious degree. There is also concern that detention centres are releasing former detainees into work ‘placements’ or ‘training’ that may constitute forced labour. US military think-tanks were the first to amplify research initially produced by a theologiananthropologist based at the Washington Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS) reported that ‘Xinjiang is undertaking a massive effort to move hundreds of thousands of its rural, ethnic minority population into manufacturing, particularly textiles and apparel’ in a policy of ‘Coerced “Poverty Reduction” for Rural Poor Minorities’5. In practice, however, CSIS has acknowledged that ‘the prevalence of forced labor by...