German academic Adrian Zenz tells DW how new documents show that speeches made by Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top leaders link the government to the crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
In an exclusive interview, German academic Adrian Zenz offers insight into a new set of documents which he says show that speeches made by Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top leaders laid a foundation for the crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The documents, dubbed the “Xinjiang Papers,” include three speeches made by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014, and highlight a range of measures that have been carried out in Xinjiang, including mass internment, forced birth control, and labor transfers to other regions.
Zenz, an expert on China’s crackdowns on ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, was commissioned to review and analyze the documents by the Uyghur Tribunal in the United Kingdom, which received the leaked documents in September. According to him, the documents provide fresh evidence that China’s top leaders directly or indirectly mandated the policies implemented in Xinjiang since 2014.
Zenz says the leaked documents are an identical subset of the Xinjiang Papers that were first reported by The New York Times in 2019. However, the Times didn’t highlight the key items and disclose all of the transcripts, he said. Zenz believes this new evidence validates the previously disclosed information about the crackdowns in Xinjiang.
The Chinese government has repeatedly denied allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang over the last few years. Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said during a daily press briefing stressed that “Xinjiang-related issues are in essence about countering violent terrorism, radicalization and separatism, not about human rights or religion.”
