The leaked documents

Explainers

The leaked documents

The New York Times, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)

In late 2019, The Times and ICIJ published caches of leaked internal Chinese government documents about the crackdown in Xinjiang. These documents provide a rare insight into the treatment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, and in particular the mass detention camps. They starkly contradict the Chinese government’s characterisation of the camps as benevolent social programs that provide “residential vocational training” and meals “free of charge.”

We have translated the leaked documents into Arabic, Urdu, French, Russian, Bahasa Malay, and Bahasa Indonesia.

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Read The New York Times’ reporting on the leaked documents here.

Read ICIJ’s reporting here.

Read the original documents, translated to English by ICIJ here.

We have also translated the documents to Arabic, Urdu, French, Russian, Bahasa Malay, and Bahasa Indonesia.

The three sets of documents include:

One

A Chinese government manual for operating the camps that hold hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities.

This is the first document published that reveals the inner workings of the camps, the severity of conditions behind the fences, and the dehumanising instructions regulating inmates’ mundane daily routines. Guards are instructed to ‘never allow escapes’ and keep everything about the camps in ‘strict secrecy’.

Two

Four Chinese intelligence briefings on IJOP, a mass-surveillance and predictive-policing program used to investigate and detain tens of thousands of people within one week.

The briefings show the program flags ordinary people for investigation — based on seemingly innocuous criteria, such as daily prayer, travel abroad, or frequently using the back door of their home. It shows the scale of the crackdown: in just one week in June 2017, over 24,000 Uyghurs were rounded up by authorities, and more than 15,600 of them sent to ‘re-education’ camps.

Three

A court document that shows a Uyghur man was sentenced to prison for asking his coworkers not to use profanity or watch pornography.

In a political system with little transparency, Xinjiang court documents are rarely seen by outsiders. The court documents reveal how ordinary expressions of faith are considered a crime.

Read the ABC’s coverage about how the leaked documents tell of 23 Australians who were swept up in the security crackdown in Xinjiang here.

We have redacted Uyghur individuals’ names in the documents for their safety.

Related Resources

Press InvestigationBetween the lines of the Xinjiang Papersby James Millward

— Nov 20, 2019

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Press InvestigationXinjiang’s architect of mass detention: Zhu Hailunby Sasha Chavkin

— Nov 24, 2019

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Press InvestigationChina Cables: Who Are the Uyghurs and Why Mass Detention?by Fergus Shiel, Sasha Chavkin

— Nov 24, 2019

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