Man Claims To Have Found China’s 'Concentration Camps' For Uyghur People
Published
A 'brave' man in China believes he's found the country's reported concentration camps for Uyghur people.
An independent, non-governmental investigation released a report earlier this year that claimed the Chinese government (CCP) is causing 'an ongoing genocide against the Uyghur' population and is 'in breach of the UN Genocide Convention'.
The CCP has rejected all allegations it is running a state-sponsored program in the country's far west.
Instead, they claim the camps are helping 'reeducate' Uyghur people, who are majority Muslim, to Chinese values.
As many as one million Uyghur people have been kidnapped and taken to the camps since the program allegedly began.
Because foreign journalists are restricted from travelling to Xinjiang, a man who calls himself Guanguan travelled to the region to see whether he could find these camps.
He originally went to the far west in 2019, however travelled back there last year after seeing international news reports about what was allegedly occurring.
Guanguan has released a 20 minute documentary about his findings and they are nothing short of jaw dropping.
In one scene, you can see the man carefully craw up a hill in Urumqi in the the city's Dabancheng district to get vision of what looks like a prison.
The structure had watchtowers and surveillance cameras dotted around the perimeter and looked to be unoccupied.
Another camp had the slogan 'Reform through labor, cultural reform' written across one building.
He manages to find 18 different camps across Kumul, Mori Kazakh Autonomous County, Fukang, Urumqi, the outskirts Korla, and Yunqi.
The documentarian relied on Mapbox satellite maps from 2017 and China's Baidu search engine to find some of the places.
However, he revealed that other camps he discovered couldn't be found on any map.
He questioned whether they're so new that the maps haven't been updated or that they've been deliberately wiped to maintain secrecy.
At the end of his documentary, Guanguan said: "The Chinese government's persecution of Uyghurs is beyond imagination.
"One who does not wish to be enslaved cannot bear the sight of others being enslaved. Down with the CCP, may it be dissolved sooner rather than later so as to end its anti-humanity evildoings."
The filmmaker has been praised for his bravery in getting crucial footage of the camps that don't appear on any map.
Architect and geospatial analyst, Alison Killing, said the clips will go a long way in helping international authorities keep track of what is happening in China.
"I was really amazed when I saw that video," she explained to Radio Free Asia.
"The first thing that should be said is just how brave that guy was to head off to Xinjiang and to go and look for those camps."
"It's really useful to have that ground-level imagery that helps us to corroborate what we're seeing in the satellite images and helps us to confirm that what we thought we were looking at from above really is vast."
