And folks wonder why I worry about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party. Via Globe and Mail:
Authorities in China’s far western Xinjiang province have made loyalty to President Xi Jinping a central part of an extensive political re-education campaign that requires detainees to swear allegiance to the Communist Party while forswearing a Muslim faith that they are told to repeat is “stupid.”
Large numbers – researchers estimate the total in the hundreds of thousands – of people have been placed in Chinese facilities known as re-education centres, where they are forcibly indoctrinated. Many of those detained are Muslim Uyghurs and Kazakhs accused of “incorrect thinking” in the midst of a campaign that has treated what authorities consider “radical tendencies” as a public-health crisis that must be expunged.
Now, interviews with people who have been in those centres show that China’s current leader, who has orchestrated a personalization of power not seen in China since the days of Mao Zedong, occupies a place of singular importance in China’s efforts to rectify what it deems errant thinking.
“Xi Jinping is great! The Communist Party is great! I deserve punishment for not understanding that only President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party can help me,” was one of the refrains that a Uyghur woman who was in a centre last fall, was forced to regularly repeat.
The woman, whose name is not being used by The Globe and Mail for her protection, was put through regular self-criticism sessions. Part of the content was cultural. “My soul is infected with serious diseases,” she would repeat. “There is no God. I don’t believe in God. I believe in the Communist Party.”
Other content was more explicitly political. Day after day she would say out loud that she was a traitor, a separatist and a terrorist.
“I am so blind not to see the greatness of our strong country’s laws. I am so stupid that I was not thankful for our President Xi Jinping,” she would be told to recite.
Her recollections add to the growing number of accounts from people who have been inside the re-education centres that have proliferated in Xinjiang since 2017. Chinese officials have denied their existence, and refused to accept diplomatic entreaties from foreign countries, including Canada, expressing concern over human-rights violations. But a growing body of evidence shows that such centres are widespread and being used for practices that critics call abusive violations of human rights.
The Globe and Mail interviewed several people who have been in the centres. They described intense attempts to indoctrinate large numbers of people in settings that resembled military prisons, with armed guards and tight security. Cameras followed every move, even into toilets. Some detainees received unknown medicines; others attempted suicide.
The long days were filled with instruction “about Xi Jinping, no one else,” said Kayrat Samarkan, 30, who was in a re-education camp last year before being allowed to go back to Kazakhstan, after diplomatic pressure for the release of detained Kazakhs. “It is about Xi as the leader of the world. The new China is best. All other countries, especially the U.S., are evil. Capitalism is evil, wrong and failed. Socialism with Chinese characteristics is the best.”
The inculcation extended to mealtimes.
“Before breakfast we had to say repeatedly: ‘Long live Xi Jinping! May he live for 10,000 years!’” Mr. Samarkan said.
“After eating, we had to say the same thing.”
Every day began at 6 a.m., with time allotted to cleaning up sleeping quarters – little more than blankets on cement floors – before breakfast. From 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. detainees memorized red songs and slogans, some of them dating to the era of the Communist Revolution. From 10 a.m. to noon, they wrote down the texts they had just memorized.
Afternoons were devoted to studying Communist Party propaganda and policies, as well as lessons about the dangers of being “infected” by going abroad. They wrote self-criticism late into the night, noting “anything we did wrong, or any negative thoughts about China or the Chinese people,” Mr. Samarkan said.
The personalization of political indoctrination in re-education centres comes amid a broader effort that, according to former detainees, includes attempts to weed out religious observance.
Xi Jinping is great! The Communist Party is great! I deserve punishment for not understanding that only President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party can help me.
Occasionally, authorities would appear to test those being held, Mr. Samarkan said. In the middle of one night, the centre was filled with the sound of the morning call to prayer. People who woke up were taken away, Mr. Samarkan said. Authorities appeared to think that being roused by the call was evidence of persistent religious tendencies.
At one point, Mr. Samarkan smashed his head against the wall in an attempt to kill himself. Instead, he fainted. He was taken to hospital and threatened with eight years in prison if he tried again.
“I didn’t do anything,” he told the people at the hospital. “Just kill me. I don’t want to be alive.”
In the re-education centre, he saw another person rip up pieces of towel and eat them, another attempt at suicide. That person was discovered by authorities and punished. “If they find out, they won’t let you commit suicide,” Mr. Samarkan said. The Globe spoke with him from Kazakhstan, where he is living after being released.
Detainees were divided into three groups, he said: religious people; those who have either travelled overseas or had overseas contacts; and those who broke rules, which could include failing to respect Beijing time (Xinjiang is far west, and Uyghurs commonly set clocks back two hours), missing compulsory flag-raising ceremonies or failing to speak Chinese.
Some people were given pharmaceutical injections and pills, Mr. Samarkan said, describing the marks on the arms of those who had been given unknown medicines. “They forgot things, couldn’t focus, looked numb.”
His account was confirmed by two other former detainees in re-education centres.
Human-rights researchers say authorities in detention centres elsewhere in China will sometimes distribute medicine for diseases such as tuberculosis, although forcing its consumption can create misunderstandings.
Reports on the use of medicine for psychological purposes in Chinese detention are less common, although enough exist “to indicate a systematic abusive practice by the police,” said Michael Caster, who works with Safeguard Defenders, an international human-rights group.
In recent years, at least five human rights defenders, including detained lawyers, said they were forced to take medicine.
In Xinjiang, re-education activities are being conducted in a variety of settings and centres, some less formal – operating as schools, with students in class either during the day or at night – while others are sprawling complexes with high walls that resemble prisons.
Authorities call them centres for “vocational training” or “transformation through education.” Scholars have called it “co-ercive isolated detoxification.” A report earlier this year from Xinjiang scholar Adrian Zenz estimated that, at a minimum, several hundred thousand people have been placed in re-education.
And on its goes.
Or maybe you’d just like some plain old corruption:
A Chinese company building a key rail link in Malaysia said on Wednesday that it has been told to suspend work pending negotiations, and urged the new Malaysian government elected two months ago to honour the contract.
The suspension came just a day after Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng called for a sharp price reduction in the 688 kilometre East Coast Rail Link after discovering that the project’s actual cost is 81 billion ringgit ($27 billion), nearly 50 per cent higher than that estimated by the previous government.
The project is a key part of China’s regional Belt and Road infrastructure initiative connecting Malaysia’s west coast to rural eastern states. It is largely financed by China and the main contract was awarded in 2016 to China Communication by former prime minister Najib Razak, who was defeated in May 9 elections.
…Malaysia’s new government has axed a high-speed rail line to Singapore because it is too costly and is reviewing other large infrastructure projects financed by China. The cost-cutting came after officials revealed the national debt has surged sharply, partly due to corruption under Najib’s rule.
You’ve got to be doing some seriously dodgy stuff to get a Malaysian project suspended.
This is not an enlightenment system of government. It’s not communism nor capitalism. It’s Sino-fascism complete with big public works, ethnic cleansing, nationalistic worship of the leader and a corrupt business elite.
We’re right to push back and push back hard, via Domainfax:
Defence chief Mark Binskin says Beijing’s broken promise not to militarise the South China Sea means it has squandered the trust of its neighbours and undermined its aspirations to regional leadership.
In his final interview before he hands over command of the 80,000-strong Australian Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Binskin also urged countries such as China that are moving into the South Pacific: “Don’t destabilise the region.”
The candid set of remarks by the top military commander follow a four-year stint at the helm during which Beijing has settled into a more forceful posture towards the region and strategic scholars overwhelmingly feel global stability has deteriorated.
Asked about China’s trajectory since he took over in 2014, Air Chief Marshal Binskin agreed “it has changed” and cited the “very, very concerning” militarisation of features as well as “the influence of some nations starting to come down into the south west Pacific”.
And The Australian:
Australian and New Zealand officials are set to seal a wide-ranging security agreement with Pacific Island nations that analysts say should be used to limit the military involvement of non-signatories such as Russia and China in the region.
The agreement, covering defence, law and order, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, is expected to be signed at the Pacific Islands Forum in September after senior officials from nations involved met last month.
International Development Minister Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said Australia had contributed views on regional security issues such as defence, police, and law and order co-operation, during the consultation process.
“A new Biketawa Plus regional security declaration will guide Pacific Islands Forum member countries, including Australia, and regional organisations on Pacific priorities for security co-operation, and provide a framework for responding to emerging threats,” Senator Fierravanti-Wells told The Australian.
The move comes amid a major Australian effort to strengthen ties with Pacific nations in the face of rising Chinese government finance, assistance and influence in the region, and after a fresh warning to parliamentarians that China’s growing policing presence in the region has expanded to include training, secondments and joint operations.
This is the one thing that the Turnbull Government has gotten right. And Labor calamitously wrong.
