Detention camps housing hundreds of thousands, perhaps over one million ethnic Uighurs, in western China are nothing more than vocational training centres, the country’s ambassador to Canada insisted on Wednesday.
Detention camps housing perhaps as many as one million ethnic Uighurs in western China are nothing more than “vocational training centres,” the country’s ambassador to Canada insisted on Wednesday.
Cong Peiwu, speaking at a security and defence conference in Ottawa, was put on the hot seat several times during a panel discussion about the competition between great powers in the Middle East.
He discussed how China could use soft power influence in the troubled region while being asked whether it is detaining a substantial number of Muslim Uighurs against their will in high-tech concentration camps.
Cong took issue with the characterization.
“There’s nothing like concentration camps in China,” he said.
Last fall, a leak of internal Chinese government documents to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) painted a stark picture of camps, which have been built across Xinjiang region in the past three years.
The leaked documents, dubbed “The China Cables” by the ICJI, contain a nine-page 2017 memo, sent from the then deputy-secretary of province’s Communist Party to the officials in charge of the camps.
The memo spells out how the camps should be run as high-security prisons, complete with strict discipline and punishments.
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