China justifies re-education camps in Xinjiang; says it prevented terror attacks

Amid global criticism, China on Tuesday justified its controversial move to keep thousands of Uygur Muslims in "vocational training institutions" in the volatile Xinjiang region, insisting that its stringent measures have prevented terror attacks in the province in the last 21 months.

Xinjiang, bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, has been restive for the past several years over protests from Uygur Muslims, an ethnic group of over 10 million Turkik origin people, over the large scale settlements of Han Chinese from other provinces.

China blamed the recurring violent attacks including in Beijing and elsewhere in the country on the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an al-Qaeda linked group, whose cadres were now stated to be fighting along with Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

The UN Human Rights panel reported in August that China has detained over a million Uygur Muslims in re-education camps which are also called indoctrination camps, sparking an international outcry.

The UN's Geneva-based Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has said it was alarmed by "numerous reports of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities" being detained in Xinjiang region and called for their immediate release.

Estimates about them "range from tens of thousands to upwards of a million," it said.

While the Foreign Ministry in the past refuted the allegations and defended the crackdown, a top Chinese official from Xinjiang in a rare interview to the state-run Xinhua news agency on Tuesday said that now the province is free from the violence.

"Now Xinjiang is generally stable, with the situation under control and improving. In the past 21 months, no violent terrorist attacks have occurred and the number of criminal cases, including those endangering public security, has dropped significantly," said Shohrat Zakir, chairman of the Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

An Uygur himself, Zakir said public security has notably improved with religious extremism effectively contained, while people are now feeling more secure.

"We have laid a good foundation for completely solving the deeply-rooted problems that affect the region's long-term stability," he said.

Acknowledging the camps in which thousands were kept for re-education, Zakir described them as "professional vocational training institutions" which focussed on "the country's common language, legal knowledge, vocational skills, along with de-extremisation education".

The centres are for "people influenced by terrorism and extremism", he said.

He, however, avoided any description of the "de-extremisation" education.

Former detainees have told the international media that they were forced to denounce their faith and pledge loyalty to the ruling Communist Party of China.

Zakir said the vocational training included courses aimed at teaching skills to work in factories, including garment making, food processing, electronic product assembly, typesetting and printing, hairdressing and e-commerce, with companies apparently paying for products made by the "trainees".

He is the first top Chinese official to speak publicly about the widely criticised camps, as China comes under increasing international pressure with US threatening sanctions.

UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet has said that the Chinese government's arbitrary detention of Muslims is worrying and China should allow UN monitors into Xinjiang.

Maya Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Beijing's "clumsy justifications" were clearly a response to condemnation from the international community but would not blunt criticism.

"These camps remain blatantly unlawful and arbitrary under both Chinese and international law; and the suffering and abuses of what is estimated to be one million people in them cannot be wiped away through propaganda," she was quoted as saying by Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

Zakir said that according to feedback from the vocational education and training institutions, some trainees have come close to or reached the completion standard agreed in the training agreements.

They are expected to complete their courses successfully by the end of this year, he said.

"We are busy with their employment arrangements," he added.