HONG KONG \u2014 <\/strong>The students booked their tickets home at the end of the semester, hoping for a relaxing break after exams and a summer of happy reunions with family in China\u2019s far west.<\/p>\n Instead, they would soon be told that their parents were gone, relatives had vanished and neighbors were missing \u2014 all of them locked up in an expanding network of detention camps built to hold Muslim ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n The authorities in the Xinjiang region worried the situation was a powder keg. And so they prepared.<\/p>\n The leadership distributed a classified directive advising local officials to corner returning students as soon as they arrived and keep them quiet. It included a chillingly bureaucratic guide for how to handle their anguished questions, beginning with the most obvious: Where is my family?<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re in a training school set up by the government,<\/strong>\u201d the prescribed answer began. If pressed, officials were to tell students that their relatives were not criminals \u2014 yet could not leave these \u201cschools.\u201d<\/p>\n The question-and-answer script also included a barely concealed threat<\/strong>: Students were to be told that their behavior could either shorten or extend the detention of their relatives.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure that you will support them, because this is for their own good,<\/strong>\u201d officials were advised to say, \u201cand also for your own good.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n The directive was among 403 pages of internal documents that have been shared with The New York Times in one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China\u2019s ruling Communist Party in decades. They provide an unprecedented inside view of the continuing clampdown in Xinjiang, in which the authorities have corralled as many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps and prisons<\/a> over the past three years.<\/p>\n Read the Full Document: What Chinese Officials Told Children Whose Families Were Put in Camps<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n The party has rejected international criticism of the camps and described them as job-training centers<\/a> that use mild methods to fight Islamic extremism. But the documents confirm the coercive nature of the crackdown in the words and orders of the very officials who conceived and orchestrated it.<\/p>\n Even as the government presented its efforts in Xinjiang to the public as benevolent and unexceptional, it discussed and organized a ruthless and extraordinary campaign in these internal communications. Senior party leaders are recorded ordering drastic and urgent action against extremist violence, including the mass detentions, and discussing the consequences with cool detachment.<\/p>\n Children saw their parents taken away, students wondered who would pay their tuition and crops could not be planted or harvested for lack of manpower, the reports noted. Yet officials were directed to tell people who complained to be grateful for the Communist Party\u2019s help and stay quiet.<\/p>\n The leaked papers offer a striking picture of how the hidden machinery of the Chinese state carried out the country\u2019s most far-reaching internment campaign since the Mao era. The key disclosures in the documents include:<\/p>\n \u2022<\/sup>President Xi Jinping, the party chief, laid the groundwork for the crackdown in a series of speeches delivered in private to officials during and after a visit to Xinjiang in April 2014, just weeks after Uighur militants stabbed more than 150 people at a train station<\/a>, killing 31. Mr. Xi called for an all-out \u201cstruggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism\u201d using the \u201corgans of dictatorship,\u201d and showing \u201cabsolutely no mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022<\/sup>Terrorist attacks abroad and the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan heightened the leadership\u2019s fears and helped shape the crackdown. Officials argued that attacks in Britain resulted from policies that put \u201chuman rights above security,\u201d and Mr. Xi urged the party to emulate aspects of America\u2019s \u201cwar on terror\u201d after the Sept. 11 attacks.<\/p>\n \u2022<\/sup>The internment camps in Xinjiang expanded rapidly after the appointment in August 2016 of Chen Quanguo, a zealous new party boss for the region. He distributed Mr. Xi\u2019s speeches to justify the campaign and exhorted officials to \u201cround up everyone who should be rounded up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022<\/sup>The crackdown encountered doubts and resistance from local officials who feared it would exacerbate ethnic tensions and stifle economic growth. Mr. Chen responded by purging officials suspected of standing in his way, including one county leader who was jailed after quietly releasing thousands of inmates from the camps.<\/p>\n The leaked papers consist of 24 documents, some of which contain duplicated material. They include nearly 200 pages of internal speeches by Mr. Xi and other leaders, and more than 150 pages of directives and reports on the surveillance and control of the Uighur population in Xinjiang. There are also references to plans to extend restrictions on Islam to other parts of China.<\/p>\n The Chinese leadership wraps policymaking in secrecy, especially when it comes to Xinjiang, a resource-rich territory located on the sensitive frontier with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups make up more than half the region\u2019s population of 25 million. The largest of these groups are the Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language and have long faced discrimination and restrictions on cultural and religious activities.<\/p>\n Beijing has sought for decades to suppress Uighur resistance to Chinese rule in Xinjiang. The current crackdown began after a surge of antigovernment and anti-Chinese violence, including ethnic riots in 2009 in Urumqi<\/a>, the regional capital, and a May 2014 attack on an outdoor market that killed 39 people<\/a> just days before Mr. Xi convened a leadership conference in Beijing to set a new policy course for Xinjiang.<\/p>\n Since 2017, the authorities in Xinjiang have detained many hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslims in internment camps. Inmates undergo months or years of indoctrination and interrogation aimed at transforming them into secular and loyal supporters of the party.<\/p>\n Of the 24 documents, the directive on how to handle minority students returning home to Xinjiang in the summer of 2017 offers the most detailed discussion of the indoctrination camps \u2014 and the clearest illustration of the regimented way the party told the public one story while mobilizing around a much harsher narrative internally.<\/p>\n Even as the document advises officials to inform students that their relatives are receiving \u201ctreatment\u201d for exposure to radical Islam, its title refers to family members who are being \u201cdealt with,\u201d or chuzhi, a euphemism used in party documents to mean punishment.<\/p>\n Officials in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang, drafted the question-and-answer script after the regional government warned local officials to prepare for the returning students. The agency coordinating efforts to \u201cmaintain stability\u201d across Xinjiang then distributed the guide across the region and urged officials to use it as a model.<\/p>\n The government sends Xinjiang\u2019s brightest young Uighurs to universities across China, with the goal of training a new generation of Uighur civil servants and teachers loyal to the party.<\/p>\n The crackdown has been so extensive that it affected even these elite students, the directive shows. And that made the authorities nervous.<\/p>\n \u201cReturning students from other parts of China have widespread social ties across the entire country,\u201d the directive noted. \u201cThe moment they issue incorrect opinions on WeChat, Weibo and other social media platforms, the impact is widespread and difficult to eradicate.\u201d<\/p>\n The document warned that there was a \u201cserious possibility<\/strong>\u201d students might sink into \u201cturmoil<\/strong>\u201d after learning what had happened to their relatives. It recommended that police officers in plain clothes and experienced local officials meet them as soon as they returned \u201cto show humane concern and stress the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n The directive\u2019s question-and-answer guide begins gently, with officials advised to tell the students that they have \u201cabsolutely no need to worry<\/strong>\u201d about relatives who have disappeared.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTuition for their period of study is free and so are food and living costs, and the standards are quite high,<\/strong>\u201d officials were told to say, before adding that the authorities were spending more than $3 per day on meals for each detainee, \u201ceven better than the living standards that some students have back home.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to see them,<\/strong>\u201d the answer concluded, \u201cwe can arrange for you to have a video meeting.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n The authorities anticipated, however, that this was unlikely to mollify students and provided replies to a series of other questions: When will my relatives be released? If this is for training, why can\u2019t they come home? Can they request a leave? How will I afford school if my parents are studying and there is no one to work on the farm?<\/p>\n The guide recommended increasingly firm replies telling the students that their relatives had been \u201cinfected\u201d by the \u201cvirus\u201d of Islamic radicalism and must be quarantined and cured. Even grandparents and family members who seemed too old to carry out violence could not be spared, officials were directed to say.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they don\u2019t undergo study and training, they\u2019ll never thoroughly and fully understand the dangers of religious extremism,\u201d one answer said, citing the civil war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State. \u201cNo matter what age, anyone who has been infected by religious extremism must undergo study.\u201d<\/p>\n Students should be grateful that the authorities had taken their relatives away, the document said.<\/p>\n \u201cTreasure this chance for free education that the party and government has provided to thoroughly eradicate erroneous thinking, and also learn Chinese and job skills,\u201d one answer said. \u201cThis offers a great foundation for a happy life for your family.\u201d<\/p>\n The authorities appear to be using a scoring system to determine who can be released from the camps: The document instructed officials to tell the students that their behavior could hurt their relatives\u2019 scores, and to assess the daily behavior of the students and record their attendance at training sessions, meetings and other activities.<\/p>\n \u201cFamily members, including you, must abide by the state\u2019s laws and rules, and not believe or spread rumors,<\/strong>\u201d officials were told to say. \u201cOnly then can you add points for your family member, and after a period of assessment they can leave the school if they meet course completion standards.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n If asked about the impact of the detentions on family finances, officials were advised to assure students that \u201cthe party and the government will do everything possible to ease your hardships.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n The line that stands out most in the script, however, may be the model answer for how to respond to students who ask of their detained relatives, \u201cDid they commit a crime?<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n The document instructed officials to acknowledge that they had not. \u201cIt is just that their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts,<\/strong>\u201d the script said.<\/p>\n \u201cFreedom is only possible when this \u2018virus\u2019 in their thinking is eradicated and they are in good health.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n Secret Speeches<\/strong><\/p>\n The ideas driving the mass detentions can be traced back to Xi Jinping\u2019s first and only visit to Xinjiang as China\u2019s leader, a tour shadowed by violence.<\/p>\n In 2014, little more than a year after becoming president, he spent four days in the region, and on the last day of the trip, two Uighur militants staged a suicide bombing outside a train station in Urumqi that injured nearly 80 people, one fatally.<\/p>\n Weeks earlier, militants with knives had gone on a rampage at another railway station, in southwest China, killing 31 people and injuring more than 140. And less than a month after Mr. Xi\u2019s visit, assailants tossed explosives into a vegetable market in Urumqi, wounding 94 people and killing at least 39.<\/p>\n Against this backdrop of bloodshed, Mr. Xi delivered a series of secret speeches setting the hard-line course that culminated in the security offensive now underway in Xinjiang. While state media have alluded to these speeches, none were made public.<\/p>\n The text of four of them, though, were among the leaked documents \u2014 and they provide a rare, unfiltered look at the origins of the crackdown and the beliefs of the man who set it in motion.<\/p>\n \u201cThe methods that our comrades have at hand are too primitive,\u201d Mr. Xi said in one talk, after inspecting a counterterrorism police squad in Urumqi. \u201cNone of these weapons is any answer for their big machete blades, ax heads and cold steel weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe must be as harsh as them,\u201d he added, \u201cand show absolutely no mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n In free-flowing monologues in Xinjiang and at a subsequent leadership conference on Xinjiang policy in Beijing, Mr. Xi is recorded thinking through what he called a crucial national security issue and laying out his ideas for a \u201cpeople\u2019s war\u201d in the region.<\/p>\n Although he did not order mass detentions in these speeches, he called on the party to unleash the tools of \u201cdictatorship\u201d to eradicate radical Islam in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n \u201cThe psychological impact of extremist religious thought on people must never be underestimated,\u201d Mr. Xi told officials in Urumqi on April 30, 2014, the final day of his trip to Xinjiang. \u201cPeople who are captured by religious extremism \u2014 male or female, old or young \u2014 have their consciences destroyed, lose their humanity and murder without blinking an eye.\u201d<\/p>\n In another speech, at the leadership conclave in Beijing a month later, he warned of \u201cthe toxicity of religious extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as you believe in it,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s like taking a drug, and you lose your sense, go crazy and will do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIn light of separatist and terrorist forces under the banner of Islam, some people have argued that Islam should be restricted or even eradicated,\u201d he said during the Beijing conference. He called that view \u201cbiased, even wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n But Mr. Xi\u2019s main point was unmistakable: He was leading the party in a sharp turn toward greater repression in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n Before Mr. Xi, the party had often described attacks in Xinjiang as the work of a few fanatics inspired and orchestrated by shadowy separatist groups abroad. But Mr. Xi argued that Islamic extremism had taken root across swaths of Uighur society.<\/p>\n In fact, the vast majority of Uighurs adhere to moderate traditions, though some began embracing more conservative and more public religious practices in the 1990s, despite state controls on Islam. Mr. Xi\u2019s remarks suggest he was alarmed by the revival of public piety. He blamed lax controls on religion, suggesting that his predecessors had let down their guard.<\/p>\n While previous Chinese leaders emphasized economic development to stifle unrest in Xinjiang, Mr. Xi said that was not enough. He demanded an ideological cure, an effort to rewire the thinking of the region\u2019s Muslim minorities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe weapons of the people\u2019s democratic dictatorship must be wielded without any hesitation or wavering,\u201d Mr. Xi told the leadership conference on Xinjiang policy, which convened six days after the deadly attack on the vegetable market.<\/p>\n Mr. Xi is the son of an early Communist Party leader<\/a> who in the 1980s supported more relaxed policies toward ethnic minority groups, and some analysts had expected he might follow his father\u2019s milder ways when he assumed leadership of the party in November 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the speeches underscore how Mr. Xi sees risks to China through the prism of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he blamed on ideological laxity and spineless leadership.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/11\/16\/world\/16xj-students-3\/merlin_82201844_5a1339ea-a6c5-4f69-be87-6ad27b30005d-master675.jpg\")
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President Xi Jinping of China visiting a mosque in the city of Urumqi in 2014.<\/span> Xinhua\/Reuters<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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Though it is unclear how the documents were gathered and selected, the leak suggests greater discontent inside the party apparatus over the crackdown than previously known. The papers were brought to light by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed hope that their disclosure would prevent party leaders, including Mr. Xi, from escaping culpability for the mass detentions.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A restaurant in the old city of Yarkand in August. Above patrons a propaganda poster is quoting Xi Jinping : “Every ethnic group must tightly bind together like the seeds of a pomegranate.”<\/span> Gilles Sabri\u00e9 for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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A watchtower this spring at a high-security facility near what is believed to be a re-education camp on the outskirts of Hotan.<\/span> Greg Baker\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
\u00a0Mr. Xi displayed a fixation with the issue that seemed to go well beyond his public remarks on the subject. He likened Islamic extremism alternately to a virus-like contagion and a dangerously addictive drug, and declared that addressing it would require \u201ca period of painful, interventionary treatment.\u201d<\/div>\n
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In several surprising passages, given the crackdown that followed, Mr. Xi also told officials to not discriminate against Uighurs and to respect their right to worship. He warned against overreacting to natural friction between Uighurs and Han Chinese, the nation\u2019s dominant ethnic group, and rejected proposals to try to eliminate Islam entirely in China.<\/div>\n
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Chinese security forces securing an area outside a mosque in Kashgar, China, in 2014.<\/span> Kevin Frayer\/Getty Images<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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