Arkansas Online

China camp can hold 10,000 detainees

DAKE KANG

DABANCHENG, China — China’s largest detention center is twice the size of Vatican City and has room for at least 10,000 inmates. The Associated Press was the first Western media outlet allowed in during a state-led tour of Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng in the far western region of Xinjiang.

No. 3 was converted from an internment camp into a pretrial detention facility, the AP found, in what appears to be an attempt to move Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities into a more permanent prison system justified under the law.

The detention center is the largest in the country and possibly the world, with a complex that sprawls over 220 acres. A sign at the front identified it as a “kanshousuo,” a pretrial detention facility.

Chinese officials declined to say how many inmates were there, saying the number varied. But the AP estimated the center could hold roughly 10,000 people, based on satellite imagery and the cells and benches seen during the tour, and many more if crowded.

This site suggests that China still holds and plans to hold vast numbers of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in detention. Satellite imagery shows that new buildings stretching almost a mile long were added to the Dabancheng detention facility in 2019.

China has described its sweeping lockup of a million or more minorities over the past four years as a “war against terror,” after a series of knifings and bombings by a small number of extremist Uyghurs. Among its most controversial aspects were the so-called vocational training centers — described by former detainees as brutal internment camps.

Under heavy international criticism, China said in 2019 that all the occupants had “graduated.” But the AP’s visit to Dabancheng, satellite imagery and interviews with experts and former detainees suggest that while many “training centers” were indeed closed, some like this one were simply converted into prisons or pretrial detention facilities. Many new facilities have also been built, including an 85-acre detention center down the road from No. 3 in Dabancheng that went up over 2019, satellite imagery shows.

The changes seem to be an attempt to move from the makeshift and extrajudicial “training centers” into a more permanent system of prisons and pretrial detention facilities.

Researchers say innocent people were often thrown in detention for things like going abroad or attending religious gatherings. Darren Byler, a University of Colorado anthropologist studying the Uyghurs, noted that many prisoners have not committed “real crimes by any standards,” and that they go through a “show” trial without due process.

“We’re moving from a police state to a mass incarceration state. Hundreds of thousands of people have disappeared from the population,” Byler said. “It’s the criminalization of normal behavior.”

“There was no connection between our detention center and the training centers,” insisted Urumqi Public Security Bureau director Zhao Zhongwei.

However, despite the claims of officials, the evidence shows No. 3 was indeed an internment camp. A Reuters picture of the entrance in September 2018 shows that the facility used to be called the “Urumqi Vocational Skills Education and Training Center”.

A former construction contractor who visited the Dabancheng facility in 2018 told the AP that it was the same as the “Urumqi Vocational Skills Education and Training Center,” and had been converted to a detention facility in 2019, with the nameplate switched. He declined to be named for fear of retaliation against his family.

The vast complex is ringed by 25-foot-tall concrete walls painted blue, watchtowers and humming electric wire.

In the control room, a wall-to-wall display of some two dozen screens streamed footage from each cell. Another panel played programming from state broadcaster CCTV, which Zhu Hongbin, the center’s director, said was being shown to the inmates.

“We control what they watch,” Zhu said. “We can see if they’re breaking regulations, or if they might hurt or kill themselves.”

The center also screens video classes, Zhu said, to teach them about their crimes.

A nearby medical room contains a gurney, a tank of oxygen and a cabinet stocked with medicine. Guidelines hanging on the wall instruct staff on the proper protocol to deal with sick inmates — and also to force-feed inmates on hunger strikes by inserting tubes up their noses.

Zhao, the other official, said inmates are held for 15 days to a year before trial depending on their suspected crime.

International

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2021-07-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

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