InvestigationIn internal speeches in 2018, then-Xinjiang leader Chen Quanguo and China’s public security minister Zhao Kezhi welcomed the early results of the crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority and outlined the conditions for « complete stability » of the region.
“Separatist Forces and “Two-Faced” People [traîtres] must be crushed and reduced to nothing! » This promise, made during an internal speech, delivered in a small committee on June 18, 2018 in Urumqi by Chen Quanguo, then secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of Xinjiang, illustrates, with unprecedented acuity, the state of mind figures responsible for implementing a policy of violent, broad and systematic repression not only against any militant of the separatist and Islamist “cause”, but also against any person, among the Muslim minorities of the Chinese Great West, who may present a potential threat to the integrity of the People’s Republic.
This speech is part of a new leak of sensitive and confidential documents obtained by Adrian Zenz, a German anthropologist specializing in this region of Great Western China. These revelations, published on May 24 under the name « Xinjiang Police Files », have been verified by a consortium of international media, including The world.
The speech also offers a detailed view of the means implemented to smash « terrorism », a concept which, in China, is not limited to designating the bombings or attacks that actually took place in Xinjiang, Beijing and the province of Yunnan (mostly between 2009 and 2014), but can also encompass a broader spectrum: even the benign behaviors of Muslims, mainly those of ethnic Uighur, merely reading the Quran, praying, growing beards, or to dress in traditional clothing, are now seen as harbingers of radicalization. And, therefore, terrorist aims.
Without mercy
In Xinjiang, China must indeed guard against « ills » separatism (Uighur) and extremism (Muslim) – the two being confused by this hierarch of the regime, in the sense that they are considered an almost existential threat to the unity of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, according to the terminology official: “The fight against separatism in Xinjiang is a long-term one, it is complex, harsh and sometimes even violent. »
Chen Quanguo, 66, is considered one of the pivotal architects of the establishment of the repressive apparatus of this politically « sensitive » region, where he was secretary of the CCP between 2016 and 2021. He had held the same position in Tibet, from 2011, three years after the anti-Chinese riots in Lhasa, which broke out in March 2008, shortly before the Beijing Olympics. His management, to say the least radical, of the situation in the « country of snow » had earned him the congratulations of the authorities, praising the effectiveness of a control system considered as a « model » of its kind. Mr. Chen was moreover the only dignitary to occupy, in turn, the functions of number one of the two so-called « autonomous » regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, where the social and political situation was, for years, the most volatile from all over the country. A consequence of the « colonization » of these territories by the Han Chinese, the main ethnic group of the People’s Republic.
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