A new trove of documents show evidence of how top Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, were directly linked to China's crackdown on Ugyhur Muslims in the country. The documents, which were called the "Xinjiang Papers" after the region where most Uyghurs reside in China, revealed how Chinese Communist party (CCP) authorities, including the president and Premier Li Keqiang made statements that directly impacted policies that affected Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China.
According to the BBC, some of the leaked documents were shared with The New York Times in 2019, but this latest trove of files feature previously unseen information. The leaked documents were passed to the Uyghur Tribunal, an independent people's tribunal in the United Kingdom back in September but have never been published in full until this week. Three academics who specialize in the field were tasked by the Uyghur Tribunal to authenticate the documents. Drs Adrian Zenz, David Tobin and James Millward all stepped up to the task.
While reporting on the leaked documents, Dr. Zenz explained his analysis saying that there were links between statements made by the highest governing officials in China and subsequent policies that were implemented against the Uyghur Muslims. He described them as "far more extensive, detailed and significant than previously understood."
According to Faithwire, Dr. Zenz, who is a senior fellow with Victims of Communism, also shared details about the leaked documents on his Twitter account, in which he wrote, "The first-ever leak of 'top secret' remarks by a Chinese head of state shows how Beijing is behind nearly every aspect of the atrocities in Xinjiang."
Dr. Zenz explained how "317 pages of classified Chinese state documents were leaked to the Uyghur Tribunal in September," which included "what appears to be the first-ever leak of 'top secret' statements by a Chinese head of state in the history of PRC."
BREAKING: the first-ever leak of "Top Secret" remarks by a Chinese head of state shows how Beijing is behind nearly every aspect of the atrocities in Xinjiang:
Internments / forced labor / birth control & reducing Uyghur population shares / big data policing / boardng schools/1 pic.twitter.com/ibJNZ8VhtL
"” Adrian Zenz (@adrianzenz) November 29, 2021
According to Dr. Zenz, the files showed how both President Xi and Premier Li, as well as other former central government leaders "directly and indirectly demanded policies that were then implemented, especially after 2016." Such policies included the "internments, coercive labor transfers, centralized boarding education, and birth control" of Uyghur Muslims in China.
Dr. Zenz added that "by comparison, the China Cables were one classification lower, and not issued by the central government." He added that while the "leak is an identical subset of the Xinjiang Papers" that were first reported by NYT in 2019, the Times "never published the transcripts, didn't mention several key documents, didn't bring out key links, and didn't disclose the secrecy level of Xi's speeches."
While the Times report said that Chen Quanguo, the Secretary of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and member of the 19th Politburo of the CCP, ordered Chinese authorities to "round up everyone who should be rounded up," the report did not say that President Xi actually ordered them, "Those who should be seized should be seized, and those who should be sentenced should be sentenced."
In June, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a statement condemning the Chinese government's "repressive population control measures against Uyghur and other Muslims - including forced sterilization - might meet the legal criteria for genocide under international law."
China continues to deny its human rights violations against the Uyghur Muslims despite increasing evidence of their crimes against humanity.
