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China says interning Muslims brings them into ‘modern’ world

BEIJING — China on Tuesday characterized its mass internment of Muslims as a push to bring into the “modern, civilized” world a destitute people who are easily led astray — a depiction that analysts said bore troubling colonial overtones.

The report is the ruling Communist Party’s latest effort to defend its extrajudicial detention of Central Asian Muslim minorities against mounting criticism.

The report by the official Xinhua News Agency indicated that key to the party’s vision in Xinjiang is the assimilation of the indigenous Central Asian ethnic minorities into Han Chinese society — and in turn, a “modern” lifestyle.

Xinjiang Gov. Shohrat Zakir said the authorities were providing people with lessons on Mandarin, Chinese history and laws. Such training would steer them away from extremism and onto the path toward a “modern life” in which they would feel “confident about the future,” he said.

“It’s become a general trend for them to expect and pursue a modern, civilized life,” Zakir said, referring to the trainees. He said the measures are part of a broader policy to build a “foundation for completely solving the deeply-rooted problems” in the region.

In the Xinhua report, Zakir said authorities provide free vocational training in skills geared toward manufacturing, food and service industries. Zakir said “trainees” are paid a basic income during the training, in which free food and accommodations are provided.

The report appeared aimed at disputing accounts provided by former detainees, who have said they were held in political indoctrination camps where they were forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the party.

Ethnic Uighurs and Kazakhs have told The Associated Press that ostensibly innocuous acts such as praying regularly, viewing a foreign website or taking phone calls from relatives abroad could land one in a camp.

Zakir said the training centers were for people “who are influenced by terrorism and extremism, and those suspected of minor criminal offenses” who could be exempted from criminal punishment.

Zakir did not say whether such individuals were ever formally charged with any crime or provided a chance to defend themselves against the allegations. The report also did not say if attendance was mandatory, though former detainees have said they were forcibly held in centers policed by armed guards.

Zakir did not say how many people were in such courses, but said some would be able to complete their courses this year.

Zakir seemed to try to counter reports of poor living conditions within the camps, saying that “trainees” were immersed in athletic and cultural activities. The centers’ cafeterias provide “nutritious, free diets,” and dormitories are fully equipped with TVs, air conditioning and showers, he said.

Omir Bekali, a Xinjiang-born Kazakh citizen, said he was kept in a cell with 40 people inside a heavily guarded facility.

Bekali said he was kept in a locked room with eight other internees. They shared beds and a wretched toilet. Baths were rare.

Before meals, they were told to chant “Thank the party! Thank the motherland!” During daily mandatory classes, they were told that their people were backward before being “liberated” by the party in the 1950s.

Last summer, Ruslan Sokolovsky entered the imposing Church of All Saints in Yekaterinburg, a city about 1,000 miles east of Moscow. The Russian Orthodox church holds special meaning for some, because it was supposedly built on the site where the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, was murdered along with his family.

But Sokolovsky wasn't there to worship or pay tribute to Russian history. Instead, the blogger wandered through the gilded rooms of the church, his eyes and fingers glued to his smartphone. He was playing “Pokémon Go,” the app that allows users to “catch 'em all” using augmented reality.

“But, you know, I didn't catch the rarest Pokémon that you could find there — Jesus,” Sokolovsky, an outspoken atheist, said at the end of a video he recorded that day. “They said it doesn't even exist, so I'm not really surprised.”

At the time, Pokémon Go was experiencing an unprecedented craze that would ultimately die down in a matter of weeks. However, the consequences for Sokolovsky would last long after he fired up the app on his phone last summer — and posted the video of his Pokémon Go-playing venture inside the church to YouTube.

After Russian officials discovered the footage, Sokolovsky was detained last fall and charged with inciting religious hatred. On Friday, the last day of the trial, prosecutors in Russia requested a sentence of 3½ years in prison for Sokolovsky.

Sokolovsky, now 22, protested that his potential punishment outweighed the crime.

“I may be an idiot, but I am by no means an extremist,” said Sokolovsky in a statement, according to the Russian news site Meduza. He compared his suggested prison sentence, for joking about the Orthodox Church, to those who had been imprisoned for decades under Joseph Stalin for joking about communism.

“For me, this is savagery and barbarism,” Sokolovsky's statement continued, according to Meduza. “I do not understand how this is at all possible. Nevertheless, as we have seen, it is quite possible indeed.”

He wasn't the only one who drew comparisons between the harsh suggested prison sentence and Stalin's Russia. While prosecutors and others have justified Sokolovsky's arrest under a new law that prevents the “violation of the right to freedom of conscience and belief,” others have blasted the potential punishment — and the law — as a restriction on free speech.

“Previously #Russia jailed people for mocking Communism/Stalin, now for mocking Orthodoxy,” Moscow Times reporter Matthew Kupfer tweeted.

The human rights group Amnesty International called Sokolovsky a “prisoner of conscience” and criticized the Russian government for detaining the blogger “solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression.”

The charge against Sokolovsky, inciting religious hatred, is the same offense under which two women from the punk-rock collective Pussy Riot were imprisoned for two years, according to the Associated Press. The group had staged a protest against Russian leader Vladimir Putin at an Orthodox cathedral in Moscow in 2012. Shortly afterward, two members were arrested on charges of hooliganism.

The following year, the Russian parliament passed a law based upon the Pussy Riot incident that criminalized activities that “insult the feelings of believers.” If charged, defendants face up to three years in jail, and at least six men stood trial last year under this charge, according to Amnesty International.

Sokolovsky's critics say it is under this law that Sokolovsky's arrest was justified.

“The problem is that did it on purpose, even though there were no Pokémon there,” a priest in the Yekaterinburg diocese told Global News last fall. “But it did not matter. It was a reason to insult.”

A judge will issue a final verdict in Sokolovsky's case May 11, according to the Associated Press.