Category: East Asia

Read RFA coverage of this story in Uyghur. Orphanage-style boarding schools for Uyghur children whose parents were detained by Xinjiang authorities in internment camps that began in 2017, remain open and are expanding in certain areas, police and teachers with knowledge of the situation said. The development comes despite claims by the Chinese government that it shut down the “re-education camps,” in which an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs have been held. Radio Free Asia has found that at least six such schools are operating in Yarkand county of Kashgar prefecture, Kuchar township of Aksu prefecture and Keriye county of Hotan prefecture. A police officer from Yarkand county said she had been assigned to take children whose parents had been arrested to schools in six different locations. “The most recent one I took one of them to was in Arslanbagh [village],” she told Radio Free Asia. “It was a school building that already existed before, and it seemed like it was a dormitory.” “The child used to live in Arslanbagh of Yarkand, but was later moved to Lengar [village],” she said. “So far, I’ve taken orphans to six different places. All of their parents have been arrested.” China said the re-education facilities were in fact “vocation training centers” set up to combat terrorism and extremism by re-educating individuals suspected of radical views, and teaching them Mandarin Chinese and trade and job skills. But human rights groups and Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims who were in the facilities said they were not vocation training centers but detention camps where authorities forced political indoctrination and abused inmates. ‘Protecting’ children After the mass detentions began about eight years ago, authorities opened so-called “Little Angels” schools to house and indoctrinate children whose parents were detained or imprisoned. Special police officers were assigned after 2017 to gather, place and “protect” children whose parents were taken to internment camps. They worked with teachers at these orphanage-like schools to monitor the children’s psychological and ideological state, keeping detailed records. In September 2018, RFA reported that nearly 3,000 children from Keriye county, whose parents had been taken to political re-education camps, were being held in two Little Angels schools, where they took classes, Uyghur sources said at the time. The police officer from Yarkand county could not provide a figure for the number of parentless children currently or previously educated in such schools there, nor could she say when the children’s parents would be released from confinement. “We don’t have information on when the school will be closed or when their parents are getting released,” she said. She added that a new boarding preschool had been established recently in Lenger village and now accommodated about 30 children. RELATED STORIES UN experts: Xinjiang expanding forced separation of Uyghur children Uyghur children face legacy of trauma caused by mass incarceration campaign Children of detained Uyghur parents held in ‘welfare schools’ in China’s Xinjiang Boarding preschools for Uyghur children ‘clearly a step towards a policy of assimilation’: expert Uyghur children separated from parents, held in ‘Little Angels schools’ in Xinjiang For easier monitoring and management, the preschools, elementary schools, and middle schools for children whose parents are serving prison sentences have been placed side by side in some areas, the police officer from Yarkand county said. “The earliest one built is at Yarkand Bazaar,” she said. “It serves as both a primary and middle school. Recently, we’ve been taking children there.” Barbed wire The police officer from Yarkand county also said the children attending the boarding schools were well-fed and safely educated, and that other police officers guarded the entrance gates to the schools, whose outer walls were topped with barbed wire. “The school environment is good, and they are eating on time with good food provided,” she told RFA. “The first one I went to was Charibagh. They have guards at the gates, and there is barbed wire on the walls. I’m not sure how many buildings there are in the Charibagh orphanage, but it’s quite large.” A security guard who has worked for eight years at a kindergarten in Kuchar county said such boarding-schools for Uyghur children “are everywhere” in the county. “In the early days, we worked 10-20 hours each day,” he said about the time when such schools were set up. “In those days, there were very few staff members but lots of children. The kids cried all the time as their parents were taken to reeducation not too long ago.” “Now the kids are somewhat used to it,” he said, adding that there were about 300 children at the Angels School. “The younger kids are here. The older kids are in the schools outside the township and county.” A police officer from Keriye county said that children whose parents were sent for re-education were placed in a boarding school, known as the Angels School, in Yengi Osteng village, and in another location. “The second one used to be an elementary school and has remained as such and named the Angels School,” he said. “There are two schools called ‘Angels Schools’ in Yengibagh — one is a preschool, and the other is an elementary school.” Mass incarceration of Uyghurs scattered some 500,000 Uyghur children in state-run boarding schools, orphanages and other institutions run by the Chinese state, according to a 2021 report issued by the Washington-based Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy. The forcible transfer of children from one group to another was one of five acts that meet the threshold for genocide, the report said. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster. 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