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World Bank support for them. A number of work areas were to be set
up, allegedly to regenerate East Turkestan and help it to develop, which
would both help the economy and create employment for the local pop-

ulation. Yet, the project actually developed in a very different way than
the paper plan. These work areas were labor camps to punish China's
criminals, principally Muslims. The revenues obtained went, not to the
local economy, but to the central economy. That was the true face of the
Great Leap Forward project backed by the World Bank. A 1998 report by
Dr. Paul George emphasized how Harry Wu described the position:
The World Bank became embroiled in a major controversy over the
XPCC in 1996 when the leading Chinese dissident, Harry Wu, testi-
fied before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee that
the organization was running 14 forced labour camps, or Laogai, in
Xinjiang under Bank supported development projects. The World
Bank loans had been aimed at helping the Uighurs but, according to
testimony from two Uighur former officials from the XPCC, had ac-
tually strengthened government control over the region and facili-
tated a crackdown against anti-Chinese dissidents. 61
Officials estimate that, in the years that followed, the amount of
land controlled by the Bin tuan actually tripled. That is because an in-
dependent Chinese province was slowly emerging within East
Turkestan. Moreover, China always looked on the organization as one

of the basic elements in ensuring stability in East Turkestan. One im-
portant example of this was the way that, after an uprising in Gulja in
1997, the Bin tuan 4th Unit was positioned in the region and used to
capture and arrest Muslims. Still today the organization is still perform-
ing its role of intimidating Muslims.
The Red Chinese regime sends hundreds of thousands of people
convicted of murder, rape and theft to East Turkestan, but those who
have served their sentences are still not allowed to return to China. The
great majority of these people are settled on land that Muslims have

Communist China’s Policy
of Oppression in East Turkestan