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China Communications Crime

China Secretly Built a Vast New Infrastructure To Imprison Muslims (buzzfeednews.com) 271

In a series of investigations, BuzzFeed News used satellite images to reveal 268 newly-built internment camps for Muslims in the Xinjiang region. Longtime Slashdot reader wiredog shares the reports with us.

Part 1: China Secretly Built A Vast New Infrastructure To Imprison Muslims
Part 2: What They Saw: Ex-Prisoners Detail The Horrors Of China's Detention Camps
Part 3: Blanked Out Spots On China's Maps Helped Us Uncover Xinjiang's Camps

Here's an excerpt from Part 1 of their investigation: China has secretly built scores of massive new prison and internment camps in the past three years, dramatically escalating its campaign against Muslim minorities even as it publicly claimed the detainees had all been set free. The construction of these purpose-built, high-security camps -- some capable of housing tens of thousands of people -- signals a radical shift away from the country's previous makeshift use of public buildings, like schools and retirement homes, to a vast and permanent infrastructure for mass detention. In the most extensive investigation of China's internment camp system ever done using publicly available satellite images, coupled with dozens of interviews with former detainees, BuzzFeed News identified more than 260 structures built since 2017 and bearing the hallmarks of fortified detention compounds. There is at least one in nearly every county in the far-west region of Xinjiang. During that time, the investigation shows, China has established a sprawling system to detain and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities, in what is already the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.

These forbidding facilities -- including several built or significantly expanded within the last year -- are part of the government's unprecedented campaign of mass detention of more than a million people, which began in late 2016. That year Chen Quanguo, the region's top official and Communist Party boss, whom the US recently sanctioned over human rights abuses, also put Muslim minorities -- more than half the region's population of about 25 million -- under perpetual surveillance via facial recognition cameras, cellphone tracking, checkpoints, and heavy-handed human policing. They are also subject to many other abuses, ranging from sterilization to forced labor. To detain thousands of people in short order, the government repurposed old schools and other buildings. Then, as the number of detainees swelled, in 2018 the government began building new facilities with far greater security measures and more permanent architectural features, such as heavy concrete walls and guard towers, the BuzzFeed News analysis shows. Prisons often take years to build, but some of these new compounds took less than six months, according to historical satellite data. The government has also added more factories within camp and prison compounds during that time, suggesting the expansion of forced labor within the region. Construction was still ongoing as of this month.

BuzzFeed News identified 268 newly built compounds by cross-referencing blanked-out areas on Baidu Maps -- a Google Maps-like tool that's widely used in China -- with images from external satellite data providers. These compounds often contained multiple detention facilities.

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China Secretly Built a Vast New Infrastructure To Imprison Muslims

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  • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Thursday August 27, 2020 @04:57PM (#60447818) Journal

    China is withdrawing its fighters [alarabiya.net]?

  • Fail (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Thursday August 27, 2020 @05:03PM (#60447840) Journal

    Come on, Hollywood and NBA! Open your yappers! You boycott US states for far less (and I agree with those boycotts) but for stuff like Hong Kong, millions are on the line, so you stay silent, or criticise dissent there, so they don't disrupt your movie sales, or sports broadcasts, or gym shoe manufacturing, or video game sales.

    You have a chance to put your money where your mouth is, but so far you've failed.

    Say it! Say it! Just like Hong Kong "they should watch what they say!"

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Millions? If it were millions, hollywood would happily boycott. This is about billions of dollars. Tens of billions. The type of money that makes millions look like pocket change, and morals like a liability.

    • All hail the mighty dollar

      In god we trust, all others pay cash.

    • Re:Fail (Score:5, Interesting)

      by godrik ( 1287354 ) on Thursday August 27, 2020 @06:09PM (#60448078)

      I am sure a lot of people do that individually. Last year, I refused to travel to China over the Hong Kong crack down for a work trip that wasn't mandatory.

      Commercially, it is currently impossible to avoid anything produced in China. Even if the product is not straight up made in China, there are components produced in China in almost everything that you buy.

      For companies in Hollywood, the NBA, large tech companies. You are probably talking about 30% of their sales.

      Really, that's a place where one needs a state-wide approach to the problem.

  • Must be one of those funny coincidences, eh? Couldn't possibly be that Xi was worried about who was keeping an eye on China and China's Muslims up till then.

    Now I feel like I have to read the article to try to figure out what else could have been going on at that time. The Uyghurs do have a rather long history of giving "trouble" to the central Chinese government.

    • You cant seriously compete with the US by making cheap electronics if you actually PAY someone working 14hrs a day! Cmon now! You do it by making these slaves, i mean prisoners with jobs, work 14hrs a day for free.

      • I don't know, Apple managed it and the fanbois applauded them for exploiting those Foxconn workers (to suicide in cases) and not even selling the resulting products cheaply.

  • ...this is the only one everybody can easily understand. They see what happens in countries with large muslim populations, and they do not want that to happen. Also, they do not want to let it come to the point where they need a 21ste century Reconquista to regain the land at a vast expense...
  • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Thursday August 27, 2020 @05:18PM (#60447880)
    Don't screw up the relationship with China, I don't want to have to pay $5 more for an iPhone made in Taiwan or Mexico.
  • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Thursday August 27, 2020 @05:20PM (#60447894)

    We could send all the violent/life sentenced prisoners to a nice new prison in China for a fraction of what it costs to house them in the private prison system.

    Death row could probably be emptied out for all the states in a couple weeks. /S?

  • by Otis B. Dilroy III ( 2110816 ) on Thursday August 27, 2020 @05:20PM (#60447898)
    Make no mistake about it, this is a prelude to genocide. China plans to work this ethnic group out of existence. They would never have spent the money to build these camps unless they felt they would pay for themselves with forced labor.

    And you know what, unless we remove Chinese labor from the supply chain of our products, we are just as guilty as they are.
    • Why commit genocide if you can just re-educate people? China has survived Mao's cultural revolution and probably has a different perspective to Americans on re-education. China for example has not felt it necessary to invade the middle east and fight proxy wars there because of Muslim terrorism on it's own territory. Frankly I do not know which is worse, drone attacks on weddings or re-education camps.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Stupid primates... We didn't learn anything from WWII. I guess we have to wait for China to have their "invasion of Poland" moment, so we can get the rest of the world organized and go stop them. Will it be Taiwan? Personally, I hope they try to invade some territory in Vietnam - that always ends well...

    • by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Thursday August 27, 2020 @05:38PM (#60447974)

      Key difference here: Large scale military conflict is off the table. Border conflicts, sure. Little regional battles, maybe even sink a ship. Lots of proxy wars too - each side backing their favored dictators to fight the enemy's favored dictators. But an all out war? The only outcome would be nuclear obliteration for everyone involved.

      China might one day try to invade Taiwan because they know that no ally of Taiwan would dare defend them, for fear of triggering exactly that outcome.

      • China might one day try to invade Taiwan because they know that no ally of Taiwan would dare defend them, for fear of triggering exactly that outcome.

        What is probably stopping them know is the knowledge that they probably can't take the island without nuking it into oblivion.

      • China might one day try to invade Taiwan because they know that no ally of Taiwan would dare defend them, for fear of triggering exactly that outcome.

        Probably not, the Chinese government has already used cyber attacks and espionage to steal much of the microchip technology that was held by companies in Taiwan.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • and then foxcon will get them at $0/HR to win back factory work

  • State Atheism (Score:3, Interesting)

    by intercision ( 3885761 ) on Thursday August 27, 2020 @05:36PM (#60447962)
    I am not a religious person myself but I have noticed that countries with state atheism like Stalinist Russia, North Korea, or China fare poorly with human rights. It's almost like we are addicts that need a higher power to keep us off the sauce.
  • ... as long as I get my everyday low prices...
  • All current and recent members of the US senate and congress, plus presidents?

  • Why has the Muslim world been so quiet on this? Is it because China isn't entwined in Mideast politics?

    • They're doing their best to become entwined there, via the Belt And Road Initiative. The plan is to build huge amounts of infrastructure and basically indebt the countries to China. (Seems like a better plan than bombing everything and occupying the country.) They've got their sights set on pretty much all of Eurasia, plus Africa. The #1 recipient is currently Pakistan with $31.9 billion in infrastructure built, plus billions more in investments.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative

  • Won't be happy to hear about this.

  • As long as you're not invading all of Europe with a hindu symbol on your flag...

    Seriously, those muslim terrorists shouldn't be blowing up us westerners, they should be blowing up half of china...
  • I eagerly await the hoards of Trump haters spin on how Trump's feud with China is at fault because Trump secretly hates Muslims.

  • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @07:29AM (#60449002) Journal

    Just remember which party complained loudly and consistently when Trump started a trade war with China insisting on a number of changes in their behavior.

  • by TJHook3r ( 4699685 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @08:34AM (#60449166)
    All this talk about things "must never happen again"... this is actually happening now and no single country has enough clout (or actual will) to stop it. The UN shows once again that it is a toothless waste of space, a few people will boycott Chinese goods, maybe some social media outrage, although in this case though I haven't even seen a Facebook post!

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