The Chinese regime has appointed a new governor for Xinjiang where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is accused of carrying out mass detentions and other abuses against members of the Uyghur and other Muslim minority groups.
A former vice governor, Erkin Tuniyaz gained some notoriety for delivering a vociferous defense of the communist regime’s policies in the northwestern region, particularly the use of facilities critics call detention centers.
Tuniyaz, 59, is an ethnic Uyghur and a veteran CCP member. He studied law at CCP’s Central Party School between 2009 and 2011 after obtained a master’s degree in economics in 1999 from Xinjiang University. He worked his way up through a variety of posts in Xinjiang and received his appointment late Thursday.
The region’s most powerful official is Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who is accused of overseeing the mass detentions and all-enveloping surveillance of minorities.
In his February video address to the United Nations, Tuniyaz said: “All trainees of these facilities had graduated” by October 2019 and the centers “educated and rehabilitated” people to “prevent them from falling victim to terrorism and extremism,” Tuniyaz said.
Observers say the camp system has been expanded with more permanent facilities, while ex-detainees say they were subjected to brutal conditions and political indoctrination intended to separate them from their traditional culture and religion.
Under the assimilation drive, the state has forced Uyghur to undergo sterilizations and abortions, an Associated Press investigation found.
Many in the camps have been sentenced in secret, extrajudicial trials and transferred to high-security prisons for things like having contact with people abroad, having too many children and studying Islam. People deemed less of a risk, like women or the elderly, have been transferred to a form of house arrest or forced labor in factories.
