Xinjiang: fighting terrorism with Chinese characteristics

"I was infected by extremism, that's why I decided to go to a training centre": lorry driver Mamatjan Akhat explains why he voluntarily attended, according to his version, one of those places that China calls "vocational" teaching centres and the West calls "internment camps".

The Xinjiang autonomous region, China's largest, is at the centre of international controversy and has prompted the European Union (EU), following the lead of the US, to adopt the first sanctions against the Asian giant in more than 30 years.

Reports by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the controversial German researcher Adrian Zenz claim that China holds between one and two million people in detention in these centres in the region's ethnic Uighur Muslim minority region.

China categorically denies this and affirms that, in order to prevent terrorism, they were vocational training centres to "de-radicalise extremists", which they attended voluntarily and which have already been closed in October 2019 after being considered to have fulfilled their function.

Efe has participated -along with only two other major Western media- in a trip to Xinjiang organised by the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the local government, the first for the international press to the area in more than two years.

Mamtjan Akhat smoked and drank before his fellow truckers "infected him with extremism" and he wasn't even religious. Nor is he religious now, and he has returned to cigarettes and alcohol, after spending a year at the training centre near Aksu, the town where he lives in southern Xinjiang.

"I was infected for about a month after my classmates showed me videos of religious extremism and terrorism. I used to scold my wife because I didn't pray," says the 34-year-old from a wealthy family in the garden house he inherited from his parents on the outskirts of Aksu.

His story is surprising to say the least. He also says that his "contagion" of religious extremism lasted about a month until, convinced by his family, he decided to join one of these training centres, half an hour's drive from his home, where he relearned "to be open-minded".

"I was not religious, but I was poorly educated and easily manipulated by the videos they showed me about terrorism. At the centre I was given good food, we had classes five days a week and we could go out on weekends to our home," says Akhat, accompanied by his wife, who has never been practising either.

Xinjiang endured years of terrorist attacks, mostly related to Islamist extremism, which began in 1992 and intensified between 2009 and 2014.

The regional government refuses to provide data on the total number of victims of the attacks, but it is estimated that about a thousand people were killed and another 2,000 injured between 1992 and 2017.

In response, China took an expeditious approach. The presence of security forces was significantly increased in the region, including soldiers on the streets, as well as surveillance and social control through video cameras and other advanced technologies.

At the same time, it set up what it calls "vocational training centres" - the existence of which it initially denied but later acknowledged - as part of its strategy to nip in the bud the risk of Islamist seedlings sprouting in the area.

The authorities refuse to provide data on the total number of people who attended these centres and the criteria used to choose them, although they emphasise that they were not terrorists - who went directly to prison when they were located - but people at 'risk of radicalisation'.

In 2014, some counties in Xinjiang that were particularly affected by terrorism distributed leaflets to the population detailing up to "75 signs of religious extremism" for residents to alert authorities to suspicious behaviour.

These signs included praying in public places - something not allowed in the region - rejecting state education, trying to convince someone to stop smoking or drinking for religious reasons, growing a long beard, boycotting commercial activities not in line with Islam, or wearing face-covering clothing for women, especially the burqa.

Indeed, in Xinjiang it is now difficult to find women with their heads covered by a hijab or men with long beards on the streets. Nor during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan - which coincided with our trip - were there many signs of the fervour or fasting typical of this period in Islamic countries.

According to Xinjiang's last population census in 2010, about 46 per cent of its inhabitants are ethnic Uighurs - though not all are Muslim - 40 per cent Han - the majority ethnic group in the country - and the rest Kazakh, Hui and other ethnic groups.

"China is not a Muslim country, that is the main difference between China and other religious countries. All religious activities must be held in designated places, according to the regulations of the Chinese and regional governments," Xinjiang's government spokesman, Xu Guixiang, told Efe.

According to Xu, a few years ago "some illegal underground Islamic teaching centres were also used to spread extremist ideas and activities" in the region.

"We are a socialist country and we separate religion from state institutions, which are secular establishments, such as schools and other places," said Xu, who stressed that the right to practise religion "is well protected" in mosques and homes, the only places where prayer is allowed.

The authorities took us to an educational establishment near Kashgar, in the south of the Uighur-majority region, which, they said, operated until October 2019 as one of the vocational training centres of the anti-radicalisation programme.

Today it is a vocational school, where hundreds of young Uyghurs learn trades, from hairdressing to catering to beauticians, for which they pay 200 yuan (25 euros) a month.

The local government also showed us from the outside an administrative centre for veterans and other formalities, the coordinates of which correspond exactly to the location in a satellite photo where Zenz and the ASPI placed an "internment camp" near Turpan in the northern part of the ethnic Han-majority region.

It is extremely difficult to know for certain exactly what they looked like, what happened and how many people entered the vocational training centres.

While the controversial - and often biased - reports of some Western institutes and researchers do not provide hard evidence for their claims, China has also been unwilling to provide the total number of people they took in, or to prove that the admission was voluntary and what they were doing there, beyond the testimonies collected in this report.