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  • Shocking scenes in China

  • Uighurs shackled and blindfolded

  • Taken by train to who knows where

  • China calls themvocational training centers

  • Human rights watchers sayconcentration camps

  • Welcome back to China Uncensored.

  • I'm Chris Chappell.

  • Drone footage has emerged

  • from China's Xinjiang region showing this:

  • A train transport of prisoners.

  • Police escort inmates,

  • who have shaved heads,

  • and are handcuffed and blindfolded.

  • The video was posted on the YouTube channel War on Fear.

  • It says the footage shows the quote unquote

  • long-term suppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms

  • by the Chinese government in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.”

  • Xinjiang is where the UN says the Chinese regime

  • has locked up over 1 million Uighurs,

  • a mostly Muslim ethnic minority who live there.

  • The Chinese Communist Party says the detention facilities in Xinjiang

  • are actually "vocational training centers"

  • helping to stamp out extremism and to equip people with new job skills.

  • See, they're schools, definitely not prisons.

  • They are affected by religious extremism.

  • Our purpose is to get rid of their extremist thoughts.”

  • Just like in a normal job training center.

  • And all part of the Chinese Communist Party's plan

  • to lift people out of poverty.

  • But human rights groups

  • and Western leaders

  • say these training centers are closer to concentration camps.

  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called

  • China's treatment of Uighurs

  • the "stain of the century,"

  • and that China is "home to one of the worst human rights crises of our time."

  • Speaking in New York on Sunday,

  • ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting this week,

  • Pompeo said Beijing's campaign in Xinjiang

  • isn't about fightingterrorismbuterasingits citizens.

  • "And further on the subject of terrorism,

  • I want to make clear that China's repressive campaign in Xinjiang

  • is not about terrorism it's about China's attempt

  • to erase its own citizens of Muslim faith and culture

  • and we call on all countries to resist

  • China's demands to repatriate Uighurs.”

  • The newly-released drone footage

  • appears to have been shot in August of *2018*

  • at a train station near the city of Korla, in Xinjiang.

  • Ironically, by a DJI drone made in China.

  • When the camera zooms in,

  • you can see the prisoners, sitting on the ground,

  • surrounded by policeshackled and blindfolded.

  • Again, just like in a normal job training center.

  • Next the prisoners are escorted off the lot

  • and towards waiting buses.

  • The video then cuts out and then...

  • who knows where the prisoners ended up?

  • Maybe it's Shanghai Disneyland!

  • Or possibly a detention center.

  • Come to think of it, yeah, it's probably a detention center.

  • Where the prisoners will be lifted out of poverty.

  • Nathan Ruser is a researcher

  • with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute

  • who verified the video.

  • He believes prisoners were taken from the Kashgar Detention Center...

  • to the much bigger facilities in Korla.

  • The red squares are full-fledged prisons.

  • Hard-time facilities like these

  • he says, are oneswhere those sentenced

  • live out years of pre-trial detention

  • and then far longer in their prison sentences.”

  • In verifying the footage, Ruser used clues in the video

  • landmarks and sun position

  • to zero in on when and where it was shot.

  • Clues like the orientation map and the scale bar info...

  • then Google Earth, and bingo...

  • the train station west of Korla in south-east Xinjiang.

  • And prisoners were probably bussed

  • to one the 150 or so detention centers across Xinjiang.

  • They've been built at a lightning pace to handle

  • more than a million people who've been detained

  • since the Uighur crackdown sped up a couple years ago.

  • Here's a glimpse inside one of the less restrictive facilities,

  • where inmates eagerly learn about Core Socialist Values...

  • which includedemocracy,” “rule of law,”

  • andmost importantly—“freedom.”

  • I know that sounds like a joke,

  • but those are the actual Core Socialist Values.

  • But these places aren't so bad

  • say Chinese authorities.

  • What about *this* Uighur detention facility

  • where you can see there's pingpong

  • dancing

  • and basketball?

  • Turns out, that's a video shared by the editor-in-chief

  • of my favorite Chinese state-run media, The Global Times.

  • And according to Ruser, it's pure propaganda.

  • The basketball 'courts' are merely mats

  • and there for propaganda purposes,'

  • he says, pointing to mats lifting off the ground

  • and to satellite imagery showing the courts

  • normally located at a nearby school.

  • After the Chinese Communist Party

  • could no longer deny the existence of these detention camps,

  • they started taking foreign journalists on supervised tours.

  • Here's a BBC investigative report published in June:

  • Is it your choice to be here?”

  • Yes.

  • I had weak awareness of the law.

  • I was influenced by extremism and terrorism.

  • A policeman in my village told me

  • to get enrolled in school and transform my thoughts.”

  • Yes, that's a totally normal thing to say about

  • enrolling in a *vocational* training school.

  • Of course, the newly surfaced drone video undercuts the narrative

  • that people are in these centers out of their own free will.

  • If they don't want to come, then what happens?”

  • We've never encountered that before.

  • But we'd proactively guide them.”

  • But isn't a place where people have to come,

  • obey the rules,

  • stay until you allow them to leave,

  • sound more like a prison?

  • Even if it's a prison in which you can do some art?”

  • Prison?

  • Is there a prison where you can paint?

  • I don't know what you mean by prison.

  • Our place is indeed a training center.”

  • This woman spent a year in a detention facility

  • mostly in one of the tougher camps

  • for the dastardly crime of having WhatsApp installed on her phone.

  • They put cuffs on my legs for a week.

  • There were times when we were beaten.

  • Once I was struck with an electric baton.”

  • Meanwhile, Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne

  • has viewed the prisoner transport video

  • and she told News dot com that she finds itdeeply disturbing.”

  • She also said thatWe have consistently

  • called for China to cease the arbitrary detention of Uighurs

  • and other Muslim groups.

  • We have raised these concerns

  • and we will continue to raise them

  • both bilaterally and in relevant international meetings.”

  • International meetings like the United Nations General Assembly

  • taking place this week in New York,

  • where President Donald Trump spoke at

  • the United Nations Event on Religious Freedom.

  • As we speak, Jews, Christians, Muslims,

  • Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Yazidis,

  • and many other people of faith are being jailed,

  • sanctioned, tortured and even murdered,

  • often at the hands of their own government

  • simply for expressing their deeply-held religious beliefs.”

  • But it should come as no surprise

  • that China's Foreign Ministry spokesman

  • said the US has "slandered China's policy toward Xinjiang

  • and grossly interfered in China's internal affairs."

  • And this all comes as China releases its annual white paper

  • about how great human rights are in China.

  • Other Chinese state-run media quickly picked up the white paper.

  • "The government says people's rights

  • have been improved since 1949

  • when the New China was founded."

  • But wait, how can they say human rights in China have improved,

  • when they're locking up Uighurs and brainwashing them?

  • Easy!

  • They just change the definition of human rights.

  • See, in the United States,

  • the Declaration of Independence proclaims that human rights

  • are not granted by governments, but by God

  • and they include the right to life, liberty,

  • and the pursuit of happiness.

  • In Communist China, though,