The Chinese government “red-flagged” 23 Australian citizens in its sweeping crackdown in Xinjiang that resulted in the detention of at least a million people from the nation’s Muslim minorities, leaked Communist party documents reveal.
Officials were instructed to subject the 23 Australians – and 52 other people believed to have second passports and be inside China – to identity verification “one by one” and then to either deport or detain them.
The revelations come from documents, which include four “bulletins”, that provide rare insight into the structure, daily life and ideological framework behind centres in north-western Xinjiang region that have provoked international condemnation.
The documents date from 2017 and were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which shared them with the Guardian and 16 other media partners. Experts who have reviewed them believe them to be authentic.
The documents reveal that by June 2017, China had identified 1,535 Xinjiang natives with second passports, and 4,341 people who had “obtained identity documents” in Chinese embassies, according to one bulletin entitled “Backflow prevention”.
Of these, 75 were dual nationals thought to be active inside China. They include 23 Australians, 26 Turkish nationals, two UK citizens, two New Zealanders, five Canadians, three Americans and a handful from other countries including Sweden, Finland, France, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Those people who were found to have renounced their Chinese citizenship were to be deported, said the bulletin. “For those who haven’t cancelled their [Chinese] citizenship yet, and for whom suspected terrorism cannot be ruled out, they should first be placed into concentrated education and training and examined,” the bulletin said.
China considers anyone who has not explicitly renounced their Chinese nationality to remain a Chinese citizen.
The document also said that those who contacted embassies while abroad should be flagged for border checks on their return.
“It’s very disturbing and it’s very scary,” said Fatimah Abdulghafur, who is active in the Sydney Uighur community. “Because those people trusted in their Australian passport, that’s why they were so bold to go back to China, they thought the passport would protect them, Australia would protect them. And it’s not just one or two, it’s 23.”
Abdulghafur said she was pleased to see the release of the cables as it confirmed what expatriate Uighur community members had been hearing for years, but that seeing the details of the treatment of her people in those documents was “horrifying”.
Muslims in Xinjiang with contacts outside China have already reported being targets of Beijing’s sweeping crackdown.
Dual nationals have been rounded up and detained, despite protests from foreign relatives or diplomats representing their second nationality. Those in Xinjiang are questioned about relatives in other countries, and communication with loved ones abroad has ground to a virtual halt.
Uighurs in Australia have told the Guardian that their family members in Xinjiang have begged them not to contact them, as receiving phone calls from people outside China can raise suspicion and be grounds for arrest and detention.
Uighurs living abroad have described attempts to lure them home, often through requests from relatives, or to pressure them into spying on neighbours. Those who return to China frequently disappear into the camps.
Australia has one of the largest Uighur communities outside of China and central Asia. Its 3,000-strong Uighur community has been calling on the government in Canberra to secure the release of Australian residents detained in Xinjiang, in camps, under house arrest or unable to leave the country.
The Guardian revealed in April that five Australian children were detained in Xinjiang, unable to return to Australia and to be reunited with their Australian parents. In 2018, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed that three Australian citizens were detained and released from China’s political re-education camps in Xinjiang province in the past year.
At the same time, members of Australia’s Uighur population have reported serious harassment by Chinese authorities on Australian soil, including intimidating phone calls and requests to send over personal data, with the threat of reprisals against family if they do not comply.
The “bulletins” also highlight the power and reach of China’s surveillance dragnet, which combines data scooped up from automated online monitoring, with information collected in more old-fashioned ways, by officials who use an app to input it by hand.
The Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) combines all this information in a detailed database of everything from an individual’s exact height and electricity use, to the colour of their car, whether they socialise with neighbours and even if they prefer to use the front or back door to their house.
The cables reveal that in a single week in June 2017, IJOP flagged up 24,412 “suspicious” individuals in one part of southern Xinjiang alone. Of these, more than 15,000 were sent to re-education camps, and a further 706 were jailed.
That rate of detentions, if matched across the region and continued over time, would explain how hundreds of thousands of people have been swept into camps already.
