Laws revised in Xinjiang region to permit \u2018education centres\u2019 for \u2018people influenced by extremism\u2019<\/b>
\nChina\u2019s far north-western region of Xinjiang has \u201clegalised\u201d internment camps where up to one million Muslims are being held.
Amid sustained international criticism, Chinese authorities have revised legislation to allow the regional government to officially permit the use of \u201ceducation and training centres\u201d to incarcerate \u201cpeople influenced by extremism\u201d.
Chinese authorities deny that the internment camps exist but say petty criminals are sent to vocational \u201ctraining centres\u201d. Former detainees say they were forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the Communist party in what they describe as political indoctrination camps.
\u201cIt\u2019s a retrospective justification for the mass detainment of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang,\u201d said James Leibold, a scholar of Chinese ethnic policies at Melbourne\u2019s La Trobe University. \u201cIt\u2019s a new form of re-education that\u2019s unprecedented and doesn\u2019t really have a legal basis, and I see them scrambling to try to create a legal basis for this policy.\u201d
The revisions, published on Tuesday, say government agencies at the county level and above \u201cmay establish occupational skills education and training centres, education transformation organisations and management departments to transform people influenced by extremism through education\u201d.
A new clause directs the centres to teach the Mandarin language and provide occupational and legal education, as well as \u201cideological education, psychological rehabilitation and behaviour correction\u201d.
The original legislation announced in 2017 banned the wearing of veils, \u201cextreme speech and behaviour\u201d and the refusal to listen to public radio and television broadcasts.
Beijing has spent decades trying to suppress pro-independence sentiment in Xinjiang fuelled in part by frustration about an influx of migrants from China\u2019s Han majority. Authorities say extremists there have ties to foreign terror groups but have given little evidence to support the claim.
Members of Uighur, Kazakh and other Muslim minorities who live abroad say they have not been able to contact relatives in China, while authorities are placing children separated from their detained or exiled parents into dozens of state-run orphanages across Xinjiang.
Leibold said the revisionswere an attempt to deflect international criticism. China has come under increasing pressure from the US and the European Union after a United Nations panel confronted Chinese diplomats in August over reports of arbitrary mass detentions and harsh security measures aimed at Muslims. China is up for review by the UN\u2019s human rights council in November.
\u201cRegardless of these revisions I still believe the practice of coercively detaining Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang in \u2018education through transformation centres\u2019 not only violates Chinese law but also international legal norms against the extrajudicial deprivation of liberty,\u201d Leibold said.<\/p>\n