Thread by @Telegraph

🇨🇳The Telegraph's @sophia_yan visited Xinjiang to investigate China’s crackdown on the Uyghurs.

🚨Part two of our special video series asks whether China’s persecution of millions of Muslim Uyghurs is entering a new phase.

Thread ~
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/1…

🔴The @Telegraph travelled across Xinjiang to investigate the state-led cultural eradication programme and document the current state of detention centres, where researchers and the UN estimate over 1M Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic Muslim minorities have been detained

Iron bars that covered windows of the many buildings at one detention facility had been stripped.

❌Workers had begun removing layers of fortification, including barbed wire and a perimeter fence.

Inside, however, groups of detainees could be heard shouting

The scaled-back security forms part of growing evidence China may be entering a new phase in its persecution of the Uyghurs.

➡️The country is now attempting to make the region look palatable as international pressure has grown into allegations of genocide

At first, China denied the existence of internment camps.

In 2018 they admitted these centres – allegedly for vocational training – were necessary for rehabilitating would-be terrorists
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/1…

As some people have been allowed to return home from the camps, urban centres and rural areas are repopulating after having been deserted when entire communities were interned.

❌But being on the other side of the barbed wire fences doesn’t quite mean freedom...

Everyone remains under the watchful gaze of authorities:
🔺Informants keep tabs on the community
🔺Digital surveillance
🔺Mandatory tracking apps – justified as coronavirus contact tracing

The apps require Chinese to register personal information, including their ethnicity

Former detainees have told The Telegraph of being required to regularly report to local officials.

Anything deemed out of line could risk detention
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/1…

🔴In Urumqi, going home means scanning an ID card and submitting to facial recognition, allowing the authorities to map individuals’ movements.

Every few dozen metres signs designate a number for the location – used to identify places when people report ‘suspicious’ behaviour

Once out of the internment camps, “there’s basically two tracks,” said @robertsreport, professor of international affairs at George Washington University.

🔺'You can go into a residential labour programme’
🔺'Or formal charges are brought up against you and you’re put in jail'

Many imprisoned are intellectuals:
🔺Imams
🔺Professors
🔺Poets
🔺Musicians

People who had sought to revive, preserve and disseminate Uyghur culture and history

People are being convicted – sometimes for life – for “things the government interpret as ‘extremist’ or ‘terrorist,’” such as:

🔺'Praying at home
🔺'Having the Koran
🔺'Teaching religion to your children'

According to Rune Steenberg, a Xinijang specialist

🌏 In March, the UK, US, Canada and EU announced sanctions against Chinese officials for its ongoing crackdown in Xinjiang against Uyghurs and other primarily Muslim ethnic minorities
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/1…

❌Some experts worry that China’s policies are creating, in the long-term, a serious risk of backlash.

“Either it continues to be extremely heavy-handed in dealing with this population, or it lets up and risks a major retaliation,” said @robertsreport

When asked in passing by The Telegraph how life fared in Xinjiang many would mumble that everything was fine, even while shaking their heads.

“I was in re-education for three years,” one street vendor said.

“I learned Mandarin, and that the Communist Party is great"

🚨The Telegraph’s special investigation: Xinjiang 2.0 - is China’s persecution of millions of Muslim Uyghurs entering a sinister new phase?

Watch in full: