The 'Karakax Leaks' are proof of China's cultural genocide against Xinjiang's Muslim Uighur population

A newly leaked Chinese Communist Party (CCP) document not only provides new insights into China’s campaign of terror, repression, and ethnic cleansing against the Uighur, a predominately Muslim minority in Xinjiang province, but also exposes Beijing’s deliberate efforts to deceive the international community through the dissemination of lies, falsehoods and propaganda.

The document known as the “Karakax List” (Alt. Qaraqash) reveals how Chinese authorities have established a hi-tech totalitarian system of control in Xinjiang, using sophisticated technologies, including facial recognition software and GPS tracking devices, and “sheer man power” to track “every face, every family and every movement” of the persecuted religious minority.

More specifically, the leaked document reveals the case files of 311 Uighur detainees who had been put in one of several concentration camps in the 2017 to 2018 period, providing an insight into the reasons for their incarceration, with many swept up for “crimes” that include growing a beard too long, fasting for Ramadan, wearing a veil, communicating with a relative overseas, applying for a passport, or having too many children.

Significantly, not one of the 311 files shows an individual being arrested and detained on terrorism charges or for the purpose of job training, which strikes a devastating blow to China’s claims that these camps have been established as “counterterrorism measures” or “vocational training.”

This is perhaps a reminder that when the existence of these detention camps was first reported in the international media, China denied their existence, only to later admit they had been constructed, but not for “indoctrination” purposes, as claimed by Uighur dissidents and activists.

These camps support the Chinese governments measures to ban Islam, Islamic practices, demolish mosques, and change the demography by overwhelming Xinjiang with Han Chinese migrants

'Show no mercy'

This document also comes on the back of the recently leaked trove of CCP documents, known as the “China Cables,” which showed how detainees are held in prison-like conditions and forced to renounce their Islamic faith and adopt the CCP’s atheism-based political ideology.

The leaks include speeches made by President Xi Jinpping in which he urges party officials to “show absolutely no mercy” in dealing with the Muslim minority.

Click on the infographic for a large version

Essentially, the “Karakax” document expands on these cables in revealing why the Uighur are being detained in the first place.

Taken together, the respective leaks affirm claims China is carrying out cultural genocide in Xinjiang, or what was once independent East Turkestan.

Indeed, there is a systematic and sustained effort to erase all evidence of Uighur Muslim life from the territory. These camps support the Chinese governments measures to ban Islam, Islamic practices, demolish mosques, and change the demography by overwhelming Xinjiang with Han Chinese migrants.

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'Slaughter on demand'

In the camps, Uighur detainees are not only subjected to forced indoctrination but also forced marriage, forced abortions, forced adoptions, forced sterilisations, torture, pack rape, and worse, as evidence mounts that China is executing detainees and selling their removed organs to organ transplant tourists.

Maxar satellite imagery of a re-education internment camp in Hotan, Xinjiang [Getty]

“Muslims are being slaughtered on demand,” a Chinese woman identified only as Ms. Aili told an online Chinese news program last month.

Her claims have been corroborated by a panel of UK lawyers and human rights activists, which concluded China is carrying out nearly 70,000 illegal organ transplants per year, with the Uighur minority targeted as the forced donor source.

“The conclusion shows that very many people have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason,” said Sir Geoffrey Nice, the tribunal’s chairman.

Many were “cut open while still alive for their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea and skin to be removed and turned into commodities for sale,” he added.

The “Karakax” documents further affirm that China’s campaign against the Uighur rises to the level of cultural genocide insofar as they reveal an intent to target the younger generation, specifically those in the prime pregnancy ages of 20 to 40 years. 

“This has major implications for demographics and the birth rate,” a demographer from University of Nottingham told DW News.

“If you take a portion – or even the entirety – of a village’s youth, you basically put a pause” on the community’s growth.

Liberal theorists in the field of international relations once predicted China would make a turn towards liberal political reforms the more it became integrated with the global economy.

Instead, China's global economic ambitions have become an incentive to do just the opposite, deciding to wipe out the Uighiur and anyone else who may stand in the way of the relentless march of its one belt one road initiative.

CJ Werleman is the author of 'Crucifying America', 'God Hates You, Hate Him Back' and 'Koran Curious', and is the host of Foreign Object.

Follow him on Twitter: @cjwerleman

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.