Minister of the Chinese Embassy Wang Xining appeared on ABCs Q&A panel show on Monday night
A Chinese embassy representative has been laughed at by a Q&A audience for describing prison camps as ‘training centres’.
Minister of the Chinese Embassy Wang Xining appeared on ABCs Q&A panel on Monday night to defend his government’s reaction to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.
But Mr Xining was grilled by audience members and panellists for China’s treatment of detainees in facilities in the nation’s far-west region of Xinjiang.
China previously described the camps as ‘professional vocational training institutions’ used to counter terrorism while improving employment opportunities for citizens guilty of minor offences.
When Q&A host Hamish Macdonald tried to ask the Chinese official if people in the camps were there of their own accord, Mr Xining interrupted.
‘Are people in these camps – you call them re-education camps…,’ Mr Macdonald started.
Left ro right: Q&A host Hamish Macdonald, Minister of the Chinese Embassy Wang Xining, journalist Vicky Xu
‘No, no, no they are not camps,’ Mr Xining corrected.
‘They are training centres,’ he said, as the audience burst into laughter.
While the official smiled briefly, he went on to say most of the ‘trainees’ had chosen to be there.
‘I think most of the trainees committed minor offences – not to the degree of criminal persecution…’ said Mr Xining.
‘But are they there voluntarily?’ Mr Macdonald asked for a second time.
‘Some of them… Many of them, I would say,’ he replied.
While China has been accused of detaining Muslim minorities and forcing them to adopt Chinese language and practices, Mr Xining said these were misconceptions.
This photo taken on June 2, 2019 shows a facility believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained in China’s western Xinjiang region
‘You people laughed at my explanation because you were immersed with messages and information provided by the western media,’ he said.
‘You were not even reading the Muslim media. In the UN human rights council, Australia joined the other 22 countries and wrote a letter to the high commissioner blaming China for the Xinjiang policy. That represents 600 million people.
‘But there are more than 30 countries that supported China – writing the same letter to the high commissioner – they represent three-billion people.’
The letter was addressed to the president of the Human Rights Council and the UN high commissioner in July 2019 and called for and end to mass detention in the camps.
China slammed the signatories and accused them of having a ‘total disregard for the truth’ and interfering with that nation’s internal affairs.
This photo taken on May 31, 2019 shows a watchtower on a high-security facility near what is believed to be a re-education camp
The Q&A episode comes two months after China defended its vast network of re-education camps in Xinjiang and said it would continue ‘training’ residents in the province.
The statement, made by the governor of Xinjiang, came after explosive government document leaks in November detailed surveillance and control of the region’s Uighur population.
The New York Times obtained 403 documents on Beijing’s crackdown on mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in the region, including unpublished speeches by Chinese President Xi Jinping who urged officials to show ‘absolutely no mercy’ against extremists.
A separate leak of government documents by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) showed how local officials were ordered to monitor camp detainees and prevent their escape.
Xu Hairong, party secretary of Xinjiang’s capital city Urumqi, slammed the New York Times and ICIJ’s document leaks, accusing them of ‘maliciously distorting and slandering’ the region’s re-education camps and ‘counter-terrorism, de-radicalisation work’.
Rights groups and foreign media have reported that official documents and satellite images show the facilities are equipped and run like prisons.
People walk by a police station is seen by the front gate of the Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center in Artux in western China’s Xinjiang region
When asked about the coronavirus on Q&A, Mr Xining said the sacrifice China has made ‘is for the benefit of the world’.
‘Wuhan had been locked down overnight. More than 30,000 medical staff have been dispatched to Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province to help their colleagues,’ he said.
‘It’s unprecedented and challenging in human history. It’s an unprecedented campaign organised by the Chinese government, against an epidemic which is a common enemy of mankind.’
Rejecting accusations of China’s low level of democracy and cover-up of the seriousness of the virus, Mr Wang commended the Australian medical authorities for their success in controlling the spread.
Amid further back and forth about China’s political system and media control, Mr Wang continued defending the country’s efforts to tackle the virus, including ‘dragging people out’ of their homes when they were ‘not very willing to cooperate’.
He said China sees itself not as a s a ‘socialist democracy’, rather than a ‘party state’.
‘A simple comparison between Australian democracy and the Chinese democracy will be like this – you have a ”voting” democracy, we have a ”working” democracy,’ he said.
‘Efficiency is our top concern.’