Tensions worsened dramatically from 2009, when Uighurs who participated in ethnic unrest killed about 200 ha in Urumqi, the regional capital, after previous tensions and violence. Chinese security forces have initiated strong repression. Attacks and more repressions took place in Uighur cities in the following years, as well as in some cities outside Xinjiang.
Since 2017, Xinjiang’s leaders under pressure from Xi have initiated or intensified policies aimed at transforming Uighurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities into loyal and largely secular supporters of the Communist Party. The State Department’s determination said the Chinese government had committed “crimes against humanity” since “at least March 2017”.
Security forces have sent hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and Kazakhs – possibly a million or more, according to some estimates – to indoctrination camps designed to instill loyalty to the party and break adherence to Islam. The Chinese government defended the camps as benign vocational training schools and contested estimates of the number of prisoners, without ever giving up their own. Former inmates and their families who left China described difficult living conditions, rude indoctrination and abusive guards.
The expanding camps have drawn increasing international condemnation, including from human rights experts who advise the United Nations, as well as the United States and other nations. Journalists and academics started writing articles about the camps and a sophisticated high-tech surveillance system in Xinjiang in 2017, long before foreign governments started discussing the issue.
The indoctrination camps, however, formed only part of the broader campaign of the Chinese Communist Party to dramatically transform Uighurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities. Other measures include transfers of work, education and cultural policies and population control.
Under Xi’s government, Xinjiang expanded and intensified long-standing programs to transfer Uighurs and Kazakhs from rural areas to jobs in factories, cities and commercial agriculture. The Chinese government said that these transfers of work are entirely voluntary and bring prosperity to the poor. But some programs set targets for the number of people relocated to work and prevented recruits from choosing or leaving their jobs – characteristics of forced labor.
Schools practically dismissed Uighur classes, putting pressure on students to learn Chinese. Uighur scholars who sought to preserve and promote their culture were arrested and publishing in the Uighur language was severely restricted. The authorities forced the children to enter boarding schools, separate from their parents.