‘Xinjiang Papers’: Leaked Documents Tie Top Chinese Leaders To Uyghur Crackdown

‘Xinjiang Papers’: Leaked Documents Tie Top Chinese Leaders To Uyghur Crackdown
President Xi Jinping (L) and Premier Li Keqiang, who have been named in the leaked documents | Image source: Getty Images

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have now been directly implicated in the crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in a newly published cache of documents.

The CCP under the premiership of President Jinping can no longer defend itself against the allegations of being involved in the atrocities imposed upon the Uyghur Muslim community in the disputed Xinjiang region.

The newly leaked documents, as believed by analysts, prove that senior government leaders called for measures that led to mass incarceration and forced labour. Some of the documents were the subject of an earlier report, but the latest leak has previously unseen information.

They were passed to the Uyghur Tribunal – an independent people’s tribunal in the UK – in September but have not been published in full before. The tribunal asked three academics who specialise in the field – Dr Adrian Zenz, David Tobin and James Millward – to authenticate the documents.

The documents have been named ‘Xinjiang Papers’ after the area where most of the Uyghur Muslims reside and face constant brutality, forced labour, and forced sterilisation by the CCP. They reveal how senior Communist Party officials, including Premier Li Keqiang, made statements that directly influenced policies against Uyghurs and other Muslims.

The leaked documents directly blame Chinese authorities for handling the Xinjiang region with an iron hand, accusing the CCP leadership of calling for re-education and relocation to rectify an imbalance in the Uyghur and Han population in the region.

In the documents, there are three speeches made by Chinese President Xi Jinping in April 2014 that address security, population control, and punishment of the Uyghur population. A few of them have been designated as top secret.

China denies any such claims and citing the pretext of national security, proclaims that in order to stabilise the region, maintain peace, and kill extremism and separatism, it must handle the situation with utmost attentiveness. According to Dr Zenz, the documents show the leadership’s long-term intention to commit genocide to protect the rule of the CCP.

 

Read more: Biden Invites Taiwan To Democracy Summit; China Left Out Of List

 

One of the leaked documents reveals how the CCP under the premiership of Xi Jinping argues that the Belt and Road Initiative, one of his signature foreign policy initiatives, requires a stable domestic security environment. Xinjiang’s southern situation, he argues, jeopardises the country’s national security, as well as China’s global goals in the 21st century.

It is not for the first time that President Jinping faces such allegations as earlier countries like the US, the UK, Canada and others has accused China of committing extreme human rights violations and crimes against humanity on Uyghur Muslims. At present, the community is among the most persecuted people around the globe.

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