Leaked documents document China's plan for mass arrests and concentration-camp internment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has published five leaked Chinese intelligence memos -- a lengthy "telegram" and four shorter "bulletins" -- from 2017, which detail the plans to enact a program of mass incarceration for members of predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities (especially Uyghurs) in China's Xinjiang province.

The documents present guidelines for the creation and operation of the region's concentration camps (which now number more than 500 and house more than a million detainees) under the guise of "vocational training centers."

In addition to setting out a number of logistical and planning guidelines -- such as sanitation and public health measures -- the documents detail a system of points-based "behavior modification" tools to punish and reward prisoners who modify their conduct to the specifications of the Chinese state. This points-based system runs in parallel to the "predictive policing" tools that the Chinese state uses to identify and target people for rendering to its camps.

The documents represent an second leak of internal, high-level Chinese intelligence memos, and they also reveal the gap between the directions handed down from Beijing and the actual conduct of officials overseeing the camps: many of the memos' directives (including those on sanitation and public health -- but also on the minimum incarceration period of one year) have been ignored within the camps, according to eyewitness reports.

Last week, the New York Times reported on another set of high-level Chinese leaks about Xinjiang that revealed President Xi's role in enacting a program of "no mercy" for ethnic minorities in the region, and the cruel governorship of Chen Quanguo, who was transferred from Tibet to Xinjiang to oversee the concentration camps. Read the rest