China on Monday vowed it would "never be soft" in its crackdown in Xinjiang, after a massive leak of government documents shed new light on the mass detention of Muslims in the far-west region.

Over 400 pages of internal papers obtained by the New York Times showed that President Xi Jinping ordered officials to act with "absolutely no mercy" against separatism and extremism in Xinjiang.

The documents, leaked by an unnamed official, included unpublished speeches by Xi as well as directives on the surveillance and control of the Uighur minority, the newspaper reported on Saturday.

China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang on Monday accused the Times of "turning a blind eye to the facts" while "taking meaning out of context to publicise so-called internal documents, slander and smear counter-terrorism and de-radicalisation efforts in Xinjiang".

"China will never be soft in its fight against violent terrorists," Geng said at a regular press briefing.

Human rights groups and outside experts say more than one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been rounded up in a network of internment camps across the fractious region.

China, after initially denying the camps existed, describes them as vocational schools aimed at dampening the allure of Islamist extremism and violence through education and job training.

Geng said that "thousands of violent terrorist incidents occurred in Xinjiang" between the 1990s and 2016, but current policies had prevented any attacks in the past three years.

"The leaked papers clearly reveal and confirm what has been going on in Xinjiang with regard to the all-out suppression and control of the non-Han peoples there (and elsewhere in China), including the massive detention and forced education camps," Fei-Ling Wang, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told AFP.

At the same time, Wang said the leak showed the Chinese Communist Party is "not nearly as monolithic as the Party pretends".

The Times said the papers were leaked by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed hope that the disclosure would prevent the leadership, including Xi, from "escaping culpability" for the mass detentions.

The documents included the confession of one local official, Wang Yongzhi, who was punished for releasing more than 7,000 people from camps in Xinjiang.

Wang feared that "rounding up so many people would knowingly fan conflict and deepen resentment", the Times reported.

Geng said at his briefing Monday that "officials and members of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang fully support" the government's policies in the region.

Related Links
News From Across The Stans

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Explosive prose: translation of Pakistani satire hits bookstores
Islamabad (AFP) Nov 18, 2019
Featuring bumbling generals, assassination plots, and homosexual romance, Pakistani military satire "A Case of Exploding Mangoes" by Mohammed Hanif has finally been released in the country's official language Urdu - even as the army tightens its grip on freedom of expression. The former fighter pilot turned journalist, novelist and librettist is best known for the 2008 novel which chronicles the final days of hardline dictator General Zia-ul-Haq's rule and the myriad conspiracies behind the plane c ... read more