“LIKE WE WERE ENEMIES IN A WAR” CHINA’S MASS INTERNMENT, TORTURE AND PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN XINJIANG Amnesty International is a movement of 10 million people which mobilizes the humanity in everyone and campaigns for change so we can all enjoy our human rights. Our vision is of a world where those in power keep their promises, respect international law and are held to account. We are independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion and are funded mainly by our membership and individual donations. We believe that acting in solidarity and compassion with people everywhere can change our societies for the better. Cover illustration: Guards surround a large group of detainees in an internment camp in Xinjiang, China. © Amnesty International 2021 All illusrations © Molly Crabapple Except where otherwise noted, content in this document is licensed under a Creative Commons (attribution, non- INDEX: ASA 17/4137/2021 commercial, no derivatives, international 4.0) licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode ORIGINAL LANGUAGE: ENGLISH For more information please visit the permissions page on our website: www.amnesty.org amnesty.org Where material is attributed to a copyright owner other than Amnesty International this material is not subject to the Creative Commons licence. First published in 2021 by Amnesty International Ltd, Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 0DW, UK “LIKE WE WERE ENEMIES IN A WAR” CHINA’S MASS INTERNMENT, TORTURE AND PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN XINJIANG A billboard stating that ‘Praying in public places is strictly forbidden’. Signs with this phrase have been documented in Xinjiang. 4 CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 METHODOLOGY 14 1. BACKGROUND 18 1.1 BACKGROUND ON XINJIANG 18 1.2 CYCLES OF DISCRIMINATION, VIOLENCE, AND REPRESSION FROM THE 1980S TO 2016 19 2. BLANKET REPRESSION AND ERASURE OF ETHNIC IDENTITY 25 2.1. VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS OUTSIDE OF INTERNMENT CAMPS SINCE 2017 25 2.2 WITNESS ACCOUNTS OF RESTRICTIONS ON FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND CULTURAL PRACTICE 27 2.3 THE OMNIPRESENT SURVEILLANCE STATE 35 3. ARBITRARY DETENTION 48 3.1 ARBITRARY DETENTION 48 3.2 INTERROGATIONS AT POLICE STATIONS 57 3.3 MEDICAL EXAMINATIONS AND BIOMETRIC DATA COLLECTION 59 4. LIFE INSIDE THE INTERNMENT CAMPS 63 4.1 DETENTION CONDITIONS 63 4.2 DAILY ROUTINE 69 4.3 ‘EDUCATION’ IN INTERNMENT CAMPS 80 4.4 HEALTHCARE WITHOUT CONSENT 90 5. TORTURE IN INTERNMENT CAMPS 96 5.1 TYPES OF TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT IN INTERNMENT CAMPS 98 5.2 SURVIVOR ACCOUNTS OF TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT 101 5.3 WITNESS ACCOUNTS OF TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT 107 6. LIFE AFTER THE INTERNMENT CAMPS 111 6.1 THE PROCESS OF BEING RELEASED FROM AN INTERNMENT CAMP 111 6.2 FORMER DETAINEES’ EXPERIENCES OF THE RELEASE PROCESS BEFORE BEING SENT HOME 113 6.3 TREATMENT OF FORMER CAMP DETAINEES AFTER RELEASE FROM INTERNMENT CAMPS 118 6.4 ‘CAMP TO LABOUR’ 126 6.5 ‘CAMP TO PRISON’ 129 7. INTERNATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK 142 7.1 EVIDENCE OF THE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY OF IMPRISONMENT, TORTURE, AND PERSECUTION 142 7.2 EVIDENCE OF OTHER SERIOUS VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW 149 8. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 152 “LIKE WE WERE ENEMIES IN A WAR” CHINA’S MASS INTERNMENT, TORTURE AND PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN XINJIANG 5 Amnesty International “LIKE WE WERE ENEMIES IN A WAR” 6 CHINA’S MASS INTERNMENT, TORTURE AND PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN XINJIANG Amnesty International EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Since 2017, under the guise of a campaign against “terrorism”, the government of China has carried out massive and systematic abuses against Muslims living in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang). Far from a legitimate response to the purported terrorist threat, the government’s campaign evinces a clear intent to target parts of Xinjiang’s population collectively on the basis of religion and ethnicity and to use severe violence and intimidation to root out Islamic religious beliefs and Turkic Muslim ethno-cultural practices. The government aims to replace these beliefs and practices with secular state-sanctioned views and behaviours, and, ultimately, to forcibly assimilate members of these ethnic groups into a homogenous Chinese nation possessing a unified language, culture, and unwavering loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). To achieve this political indoctrination and forced cultural assimilation, the government undertook a campaign of arbitrary mass detention. Huge numbers of men and women from predominantly Muslim ethnic groups have been detained. They include hundreds of thousands who have been sent to prisons as well as hundreds of thousands – perhaps 1 million or more – who have been sent to what the government refers to as “training” or “education” centres. These facilities are more accurately described as internment camps. Detainees in these camps are subjected to a ceaseless indoctrination campaign as well as physical and psychological torture and other forms of ill-treatment. The internment camp system is part of a larger campaign of subjugation and forced assimilation of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. The government of China has enacted other far-reaching policies that severely restrict the behaviour of Muslims in Xinjiang. These policies violate multiple human rights, including the rights to liberty and security of person; to privacy; to freedom of movement; to opinion and expression; to thought, conscience, religion, and belief; to participate in cultural life; and to equality and non-discrimination. These violations are carried out in such a widespread and systematic manner that they are now an inexorable aspect of daily life for millions of members of predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. The government of China has taken extreme measures to prevent accurate information about the situation in Xinjiang from being documented, and finding reliable information about life inside the internment camps is particularly difficult. Between October 2019 and May 2021, Amnesty International interviewed dozens of former detainees and other people who were present in Xinjiang since 2017, most of whom had never spoken publicly about their experiences before. The testimonies of former detainees represent a significant portion of all public testimonial evidence gathered about the situation inside the internment camps since 2017. The evidence Amnesty International has gathered provides a factual basis for the conclusion that the Chinese government has committed at least the following crimes against humanity: imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; and persecution. “LIKE WE WERE ENEMIES IN A WAR” CHINA’S MASS INTERNMENT, TORTURE AND PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN XINJIANG 7 Amnesty International Amnesty International interviewed 55 people who had been detained in internment camps and later released. All of them had been arbitrarily detained for what appears to be, by all reasonable standards, entirely lawful conduct; that is, without having committed any internationally recognized criminal offence. The internment camp detention process appears to be operating outside the scope of the Chinese criminal justice system or other domestic law. According to government documents and statements by government officials, applying criminal procedure would be inappropriate because the people in the camps are there “voluntarily” and are not criminals. As demonstrated by the testimonies and other evidence presented in this report, however, attendance in the camps is not voluntary, and conditions in the camps are an affront to human dignity. Aiman, a government official who participated in mass arrests, told Amnesty how, in late 2017, police took people from their homes without warning, how family members of the detained people reacted, and what the role of government cadres was in the process: I was there… The police would take people out of their houses… with hands handcuffed behind them, including women… and they put black hoods on them… Nobody could resist. Imagine if all of a sudden a group [of police] enters [your home], cuffs you and puts [a black hood] over your head… It was very sad… [Afterwards] I cried… That night we made 60 arrests… That was just in one district [of many where people were being detained]… Every day they arrested more people. Individuals Amnesty International interviewed said the reasons they were given for their detention were often not tied to specific acts; rather, detainees were informed that they had been detained because they had been classified as “suspicious” or “untrustworthy” or as a “terrorist” or an “extremist”. When specific acts were mentioned, they generally fell into a few broad categories. One category includes offences related to foreign countries. Numerous former detainees were sent to camps for living, travelling, or studying abroad or for communicating with people abroad. Many were even detained simply for being “connected” with people who lived, travelled, studied, or communicated with people abroad. Another category includes those detained for offences related to using unauthorized software or digital communications technology. Many former detainees were sent to camps for using or having forbidden software applications on their mobile phones. Another common category includes anything related to religion. Former detainees were sent to camps for reasons related to Islamic beliefs or practice, including working in a mosque, praying, having a prayer mat,