BEIJING (Reuters) – At a press conference in Beijing on Friday, Chinese officials broadcast a video of a thin Uighur man with a shaved head, wearing a large uniform and talking directly to the camera.
“I will try my best to change myself and receive the justice of the party and the government,” said the man, Erkin Tursun, a former TV producer who, according to officials, is serving a 20-year sentence in Xinjiang on charges of ” Incitement to ethnic hatred, ethnic discrimination and cover-up of crimes “
Tursun, who is almost unrecognizable from photos shared online before his arrest in 2018, addresses his son, who now lives abroad, and publicly pleads against Tursun’s detention, which he says is arbitrary.
It was one of more than half a dozen such segments that show that Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority in the western region, are pleading with family members abroad to come home and stop fighting against China and the ruling Communist Party. Party to talk about.
Such press conferences have become a major step in Beijing’s growing campaign to defend its Xinjiang policies amid growing Western criticism, including US sanctions and genocide allegations, as Beijing prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in February. .
For months, China has been pushing back more and more against global criticism of its Xinjiang policies, including with explicit attacks on women who have made claims of abuse.
Last month, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on Chinese officials over human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China has retaliated with its own sanctions.
Some major Western brands such as H&M, which are facing boycotts in China over their previous statements about Xinjiang, are struggling to strike a balance between consumers in the world’s second largest economy and public opinion at home.
Beijing’s propaganda campaign, which has included 11 media conferences in the capital since December, has repeatedly included efforts to discredit overseas Uighurs who speak to the media.
China has also hosted overseas press events, including this week in Canberra, state media documentaries and a musical movie released, inviting diplomats from friendly countries including Iran, Malaysia and Russia to visit Xinjiang and promoting sympathetic foreign YouTubers and news sites.
It has also targeted individual overseas scrum analysts, journalists and academics with sanctions, reinforcing critical comments on social media and aggressive state media coverage.
Officials in the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Xinjiang government say efforts are needed to counter “lies and slander” released by a network of “anti-China forces” abroad.
“PAPER, WHEN WILL YOU COME BACK?”
Uighurs living abroad said videos of family members, often produced by Chinese state media, are being staged.
“The piece basically prints a story that it is our Uighurs abroad who have suddenly left our families, which is ridiculous,” Mamutjan Abdurehim, Australia, said on Twitter in March after a Chinese state broadcaster took footage of his family in Kashgar.
On Friday, Chinese officials shared clips of Mamutjan’s daughter sitting next to her grandparents.
‘Dad, when will you be back? We all miss you, ”she said.
According to United Nations experts and researchers, more than a million people, mostly Uighurs, have been detained in an extensive network of camps in Xinjiang since 2017. China initially denied that the camps existed, but has since said they are vocational centers and that all the people who have been there have “graduated”.
During Friday’s event, officials focused on databases set up by overseas activists documenting the names and details of people trapped in China’s camp system.
Officials said they had confirmed the identities of 10,708 people in the overseas databases, but said more than 1,300 people on the list had been “completely made up” while more than 6,000 were living “normal lives”.
Officials said 3,244 people listed in one database were serving criminal justice in Xinjiang “for crimes that endanger public safety in Xinjiang, terrorism and other crimes.”
They said 238 died of diseases and other causes.
Overseas rights groups and some family members of people detained in Xinjiang say they have not received details on where their relatives or sentences are. Xinjiang courts do not disclose the vast majority of rulings or case details.
Reporting by Cate Cadell; Edited by Tony Munroe and William Mallard