Journalist Sherif Sonbol was taking pictures of ethnic dancers during an official tour of China's far western Xinjiang province when he noticed a room full of women being trained to use sewing machines. He realised he was in one of Beijing's network of political indoctrination camps, where – according to the United Nations – China is detaining up to one million members of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.
Sonbol, an Egyptian photographer and editor, was one of at least 80 journalists taken to Xinjiang since 2015 on the "Silk Road Celebrity China Tour". He left convinced that accounts of mistreatment inside the re-education centres were untrue. "I keep hearing people saying the education centres were where they torture people," he said. But the enthusiasm of the dancers impressed him, "Look at their faces! You know these are very happy people."
Sonbol described interviewing a female inmate who said she'd been given three years in the re-education camp after assaulting other women who had failed to use the Islamic head-covering, the hijab. "She committed a crime!" he said. "She agreed to go to the re-education centre. What's wrong with that?"
Murat Yilmaz, a reporter for Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, took part in a tour to Xinjiang in 2017. Yilmaz's output from the visit – two news stories praising Chinese growth – also argued for increased economic cooperation for countries along the belt and road initiative, echoing Chinese talking points. "I got to see China with my own eyes, and I got correct information," he wrote in an email.
But one journalist who had a very different reaction to an official tour was Albanian-Canadian freelance Olsi Jazexhi. In August 2019, he flew to Xinjiang for an eight-day tour with another 19 journalists from 16 countries.He had always vocally opposed the United States, and when he approached the Chinese embassy in Tirana, he only had one aim in mind. "I wanted to write a good piece on China," he admitted, "I wanted to prove to the world that the Americans, like they lied about us in the Balkans, they are lying about the Chinese as well."
"We understood that these people were not even allowed to speak their own mother tongue," he said. Through conversations with handlers, he realised that the practice of Islam was prohibited in the camps, and that residents were not allowed access to phones or contact with their families.
He also learned some of the reasons why they had been detained, including wearing the hijab, praying in public and reading the Qur'an. "What we found out was that in Xinjiang, practising Islam was considered to be a crime," he said.
"In our trip, they had produced this Potemkin show," he said. "Almost all of us as journalists, we understood that the CCP had put on a show for us. They wanted us to sell the world a fake story."
Sonbol emerged convinced that Beijing's motives in Xinjiang were humane, and that the western press treated China unfairly.
Jazexhi, even though he was not won over by his experience in Xinjiang, said: "China is doing what the British and Americans do. They're producing fake stories in the service of their imperialism."
"They spend a lot. And I believe that in the long term, they're going to win the war against the west."
How China uses Muslim press trips to counter claims of Uighur abuse
Beijing has taken dozens of journalists from the Islamic world on tours of its indoctrination camps in Xinjiang in an attempt to counter western headlines
www.theguardian.com
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