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In this Dec. 3, 2018, file photo, residents line up inside the Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center, at the Kunshan Industrial Park, in Artux in western China's Xinjiang region.Ng Han Guan/The Associated Press

The Chinese government has outlawed the practice of Islam inside the political indoctrination and vocational training centres it has built in the country’s western Xinjiang region, Beijing acknowledged Monday.

Former detainees have described being locked in prison-like facilities for many months and vigorously prohibited from prayer or religious ablutions.

But China operates such centres using a “boarding-school management system,” according to a lengthy defence of the country’s practices contained in a 26-page white paper on "The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang.”

And “in accordance with the law, the centres adopt a policy of separating education and religion,” the paper says. “Trainees may not organize and participate in religious activities at the centres.”

Though it is filled with statistics, the paper does not say how many people have been placed in such centres, some of which resemble jails with high walls, guard towers and barbed-wire defences. The number of detainees – whom China calls “trainees” – likely exceeds a million, the U.S. Department of State has estimated.

Chinese officials have called that number inaccurate, but declined to offer an alternative as Beijing seeks to dispel condemnation, particularly from Western countries, that it has locked large numbers of Muslims into a network of internment centres, which critics call “re-education camps.”

China’s use of indoctrination centres has come in response to “thousands of terrorist attacks” between 1990 to the end of 2016, the paper states, citing the deaths of hundreds of police officers and “immeasurable damage to property.”

Since 2014, authorities in Xinjiang have arrested 12,995 “terrorists," it says, while punishing 30,645 people for “illegal religious activities” and confiscating “345,229 copies of illegal religious materials.”

Those sent to indoctrination centres have either participated in, or been incited to join “in terrorist or extremist activities,” the paper argues, although it does not define what constitutes extremism.

In a series of interviews over the past two weeks, former detainees described a series of reasons for placement in indoctrination centres. Zharqynbek Otan was taken away after he was found with a prayer mat, which officials said was evidence he had been praying. Rahima Senbai was accused of possessing illegal software, because authorities found WhatsApp installed on her phone. Gulzira Auelhan was accused of living in Kazakhstan – one of “26 dangerous countries” – and, authorities said, ”nobody can prove that you weren’t involved in religious activities there” or “infected with religious ideas, watching movies or soap operas from Islamic countries.”

Detainees are given Chinese language and legal training, the paper says, and have “broadened their channels to acquire modern knowledge and information.”

“The centres fully respect and protect the customs and habits of trainees of different ethnic groups, care for their mental health, offer psychological counselling services and help them solve real-life problems,” it says.

The official Chinese descriptions put “a nice spin on very heavy-handed indoctrination – including forced Chinese lessons, which according to testimonies can be met with harsh punishment for those who fail lessons or don’t memorize the language of the slogans,” said Adrian Zenz, a scholar at the European School of Culture and Theology.

If officials in Xinjiang “offered free, voluntary lessons and coaching in modern language and how to be successful in modern society and how to get ahead, that would be an entirely different thing,” he said.

“The paper is not credible because it does not answer our central questions about the region,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch.

“How many people are held in these facilities? Why are people being detained for using WhatsApp or visiting foreign countries, which are lawful behaviours under Chinese law? And why is the government subjecting Turkic Muslims to mass surveillance measures, including mass collection of DNA of people unconnected to crimes?”

But for China, Ms. Wang said, there may be reason to offer the white paper as an extended defence. While Turkish foreign ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy in late February decried “torture and political brainwashing in internment camps and prisons” in China, the Council of Foreign Ministers under the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which represents 57 Muslim-majority nations, subsequently passed a resolution that “commends the efforts of the People’s Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens.”

That “statement praising the Xinjiang authorities has probably made the Chinese government redouble its propaganda efforts, thinking that it can win public opinion, particularly in Muslim-majority countries,” Ms. Wang said.

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