Outlays by some public security and justice departments at least double, study findsReport comes as China faces scrutiny from the United Nations over its human rights record
An extra 20 billion yuan (US$2.89 billion) was spent on building security facilities in China’s far western region of Xinjiang last year as authorities implemented a controversial re-education camp programme, a new study has estimated.
The programme was also a focus of a periodic UN human rights review in Geneva on Tuesday, with many Western countries urging China to halt the internments targeting citizens of ethnic minorities and allow independent observers unhindered access to inspect the camps.
In August, another UN panel said camps in the region were holding up to a million Uygurs and other Muslims, subjecting them to enforced political indoctrination.
But Chinese authorities described the camps as “vocational training centres” used in the country’s religious de-radicalisation campaign. Chinese officials also denied that any citizens were detained arbitrarily and that the UN’s figure was accurate.
There is still no word from Beijing nor Urumqi on the scale of the re-education camp programme.
In a study released this week, Adrian Zenz, a specialist on the region from the European School of Culture and Theology in Germany, examined outlays by national and local governments, including their finance departments, and found an unusual rise in spending by various levels of administration in Xinjiang for the 2017 financial year.
In particular, five categories of expenditure by police, justice departments and other domestic security agencies grew to between double and nearly quadruple from 2016 – in contrast to the budget for vocational education which shrank by 7 per cent.
“Just like [China’s] former re-education through labour system, Xinjiang’s re-education campaign seems to be managed by [justice bureaus], administered by the public security agencies, and funded largely out of the budgets of these same authorities,” the report said.
