BEIJING (Reuters) – During a busy press event on Friday in Beijing, Chinese officials broadcast a video of a skinny Uyghur man with a shaved head wearing an oversized uniform and speaking directly into the camera.
“I will do my best to change myself and receive leniency from the party and the government,” said the man, Erkin Tursun, a former TV producer who, officials said, is serving a 20-year sentence in Xinjiang. accusation of “Inciting ethnic hatred, ethnic discrimination and covering up crimes”.
Almost unrecognizable from photos shared online before his 2018 arrest, Tursun is addressing his son, who now lives abroad and has publicly argued against Tursun’s detention, which he says is arbitrary.
It was one of more than half a dozen such segments in which Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in the Western region, begged relatives abroad to come home and stop speaking out against China and the ruling Communist Party. .
Such press conferences have become a staple of Beijing’s broadening campaign to defend its Xinjiang policies amid mounting Western criticism, including US sanctions and allegations of genocide, as Beijing prepares for the 2022 Winter Olympics in February.
For months, China has increasingly resisted global criticism of its Xinjiang policies, including explicit attacks on women who claim to have abused them.
Last month, the United States, the European Union, Great Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on Chinese officials for human rights violations in Xinjiang. China retaliated with its own sanctions.
Some big Western brands like H&M, which are boycotted in China for their earlier statements about Xinjiang, are struggling to balance consumers in the world’s second-largest economy and public opinion at home.
Beijing’s propaganda campaign, which has included 11 media briefings in the capital since December, has included repeated attempts to discredit overseas Uyghurs speaking to the media.
China has also held foreign press events, including one this week in Canberra, released state media documentaries and a music film, invited diplomats from friendly countries including Iran, Malaysia and Russia to visit Xinjiang, and promoted sympathetic foreign YouTubers and news sites.
It has also targeted individual foreign think-tank analysts, journalists and academics with sanctions, reinforcing critical comments on social media and aggressive reporting in the state media.
Officials from China’s Foreign Ministry and the Xinjiang government say efforts are needed to counter ‘lies and defamation’ released by a network of ‘anti-Chinese forces’ abroad.
“DADDY, WHEN ARE YOU COMING BACK?”
Uyghurs living abroad have said videos of family members, often produced by Chinese state media, are being staged.
“The play basically expresses a story that we Uyghurs abroad have suddenly left our families, which is laughable,” Australia-based Mamutjan Abdurehim said on Twitter in March after a Chinese state broadcaster released footage of his family in Kashgar.
On Friday, Chinese officials shared clips of Mamutjan’s daughter sitting next to her grandparents.
‘Daddy, when are you coming back? We all miss you, ”she said.
United Nations experts and researchers estimate that since 2017, more than a million people, mostly Uyghurs, have been detained in an extensive network of camps across Xinjiang. China initially denied that the camps existed, but has since said they are vocational centers and that all the people who were there “graduated”.
During Friday’s event, officials targeted databases set up by foreign activists who had documented the names and details of people trapped in China’s camp system.
Officials said they had confirmed the identities of 10,708 people listed in the overseas databases, but said more than 1,300 people on the list were “completely made up”, while more than 6,000 are living “normal lives.”
Officials said 3,244 people listed on one database are serving court sentences in Xinjiang “for crimes endangering public security in Xinjiang, terrorism and other crimes.”
They said 238 had died of illness and other causes.
Overseas rights groups and some family members of people detained in Xinjiang say they have not been given details of the whereabouts or convictions of their relatives. Xinjiang courts do not disclose the vast majority of verdicts or details of cases.
Reporting by Cate Cadell; Edited by Tony Munroe and William Mallard