Xinjiang camps: China takes its defence of ‘re-education centres’ overseas with Pakistan meeting
Explanation at embassy in Islamabad continues shift in how China approaches the topic of camps, after Xinjiang governor’s first detailed revelations of ‘training’ for Muslim minorities
China has taken its defence of the mass detention of Muslim minorites to an overseas audience, with its diplomats holding a meeting with a group of Uygur Chinese people in Pakistan to try to garner support for Beijing’s policies in the far-western region of Xinjiang.
The meeting in Islamabad came as Beijing gave details for the first time about the sprawling network of internment camps in the region, which shares a border with Pakistan, amid rising international criticisms of human rights violations and forced indoctrination.
The overseas efforts reflect changes in Beijing’s account of the detentions, from denying the existence of the “re-education centres” to stressing the terrorism threat it claims is facing Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and how Muslim minorities are transformed in the camps, which Beijing said was aimed at removing extremist thoughts through vocational training.
A meeting on Tuesday in the Chinese embassy in Pakistan, chaired by consul general Shen Zicheng and attended by leaders of overseas Chinese associations and Chinese Uygur organisations, extended the new narrative.
Chinese diplomats have written to overseas media defending the policies in Xinjiang, but Tuesday’s meeting in Pakistan’s capital is the most high-profile evidence of Beijing stepping up its new narrative outside China.