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A30 world news
Diabierna 23 Juli 2021

Room for 10,000: Inside China’s largest detention center

(AP) — The Uyghur in- CCTV, which Zhu said was
mates sat in uniform rows being shown to the inmates.
with their legs crossed in
lotus position and their “We control what they
backs ramrod straight, watch,” Zhu said. “We can
numbered and tagged, see if they’re breaking regu-
gazing at a television lations, or if they might hurt
playing grainy black-and- or kill themselves.”
white images of Chinese
Communist Party history. The center also screens video
classes, Zhu said, to teach
This is one of an estimated them about their crimes.
240 cells in just one section
of Urumqi No. 3 Detention “They need to be taught why
Center in Dabancheng, seen it’s bad to kill people, why it’s
by Associated Press journal- bad to steal,” Zhu said.
ists granted extraordinary ac-
cess during a state-led tour Twenty-two rooms with
to China’s far west Xinjiang chairs and computers allow
region. The detention center inmates to chat with lawyers,
is the largest in the country relatives, and police via video,
and possibly the world, with as they are strapped to their
a complex that sprawls over seats. Down the corridor, an
220 acres — making it twice and interviews with experts During the April tour of No. swered a number for Heng- office houses a branch of the
as large as Vatican City. A sign and former detainees suggest 3 in Dabancheng, officials feng confirmed the com- Urumqi prosecutor’s office,
at the front identified it as a that while many “training repeatedly distanced it from pany had taken part in the in another sign of the switch
“kanshousuo,” a pre-trial de- centers” were indeed closed, the “training centers” that construction of the “training to a formal prison system.
tention facility. some like this one were sim- Beijing claims to have closed. center,” but Hengfeng did
ply converted into prisons not respond to further re- A nearby medical room con-
Chinese officials declined to or pre-trial detention facili- “There was no connection quests for comment. tains a gurney, a tank of oxy-
say how many inmates were ties. Many new facilities have between our detention cen- gen and a cabinet stocked
there, saying the number also been built, including a ter and the training centers,” A former construction con- with medicine. Guidelines
varied. But the AP estimated new 85-acre detention center insisted Urumqi Public Se- tractor who visited the Da- hanging on the wall instruct
the center could hold rough- down the road from No. 3 curity Bureau director Zhao bancheng facility in 2018 told staff on the proper protocol to
ly 10,000 people and many in Dabancheng that went up Zhongwei. “There’s never the AP that it was the same deal with sick inmates – and
more if crowded, based on over 2019, satellite imagery been one around here.” as the “Urumqi Vocational also to force-feed inmates on
satellite imagery and the cells shows. Skills Education and Training hunger strikes by inserting
and benches seen during the They also said the No. 3 Center,” and had been con- tubes up their noses.
tour. While the BBC and Re- The changes seem to be an center was proof of China’s verted to a detention facility
uters have in the past report- attempt to move from the commitment to rehabilita- in 2019, with the nameplate Zhao, the other official, said
ed from the outside, the AP makeshift and extrajudicial tion and the rule of law, with switched. He declined to be inmates are held for 15 days
was the first Western media “training centers” into a more inmates provided hot meals, named for fear of retaliation to a year before trial depend-
organization allowed in. permanent system of prisons exercise, access to legal coun- against his family. ing on their suspected crime,
and pre-trial detention facili- sel and televised classes lec- and the legal process is the
This site suggests that China ties justified under the law. turing them on their crimes. “All the former students in- same as in the rest of China.
still holds and plans to hold While some Uyghurs have Rights are protected, officials side became prisoners,” he He said the center was built
vast numbers of Uyghurs been released, others have say, and only lawbreakers said. to house inmates away from
and other mostly Muslim simply been moved into this need worry about detention. the city because of safety con-
minorities in detention. Sat- prison network. The vast complex is ringed cerns.
ellite imagery shows that new “See, the BBC report said by 25-feet-tall concrete walls
buildings stretching almost a However, researchers say this was a re-education camp. painted blue, watchtowers, Urumqi No. 3 Detention
mile long were added to the many innocent people were It’s not - it’s a detention cen- and humming electric wire. Center is comparable in size
Dabancheng detention facil- often thrown in detention ter,” said Liu Chang, an offi- Officials led AP journalists to Rikers Island in New York
ity in 2019. for things like going abroad cial with the foreign ministry. through the main entrance, City, but the region serves
or attending religious gath- past face-scanning turnstiles less than four million people
China has described its erings. Darren Byler, an an- However, despite the claims and rifle-toting guards in compared to nearly 20 mil-
sweeping lockup of a mil- thropologist studying the of officials, the evidence military camouflage. lion for Rikers. At least three
lion or more minorities over Uyghurs at the University of shows No. 3 was indeed an other detention centers are
the past four years as a “war Colorado, noted that many internment camp. A Reuters In one corner of the com- sprinkled across Urumqi,
against terror,” after a series prisoners have not com- picture of the entrance in pound, masked inmates sat along with ten or more pris-
of knifings and bombings by mitted “real crimes by any September 2018 shows that in rigid formation. Most ap- ons.
a small number of extremist standards,” and that they go the facility used to be called peared to be Uyghur. Zhu
Uyghurs native to Xinjiang. through a “show” trial with- the “Urumqi Vocational Hongbin, the center’s di- The No. 3 center did not ap-
Among its most controver- out due process. Skills Education and Train- rector, rapped on one of the pear to be at full capacity; one
sial aspects were the so-called ing Center”. Publicly avail- cell’s windows. section was closed, officials
vocational “training centers” “We’re moving from a police able documents collected by said, and six to ten inmates
– described by former de- state to a mass incarceration Shawn Zhang, a law student “They’re totally unbreak- sat in each cell, taking up only
tainees as brutal internment state. Hundreds of thousands in Canada, confirm that a able,” he said, his voice half the benches. But the lat-
camps surrounded by barbed of people have disappeared center by the same name was muffled beneath head-to-toe est official government statis-
wire and armed guards. from the population,” Byler commissioned to be built at medical gear. tics available, for 2019, show
said. “It’s the criminalization the same location in 2017. that there were about twice as
China at first denied their of normal behavior.” At the control room, staff many arrests in Xinjiang that
existence, and then, under Records also show that Chi- gazed at a wall-to-wall, year than before the crack-
heavy international criticism, The detention Center in Da- nese conglomerate Hengfeng God’s-eye display of some down started in 2017. Hun-
said in 2019 that all the oc- bancheng sprawls over 220 Information Technology won two dozen screens streaming dreds of thousands have been
cupants had “graduated.” acres — making it twice as an $11 million contract for footage from each cell. An- sentenced to prison, many to
But the AP’s visit to Da- large as Vatican City. outfitting the Urumqi “train- other panel played program- terms of five years or more.
bancheng, satellite imagery ing center”. A man who an- ming from state broadcaster