German researcher Adrian Zenz — whose previous work has documented the existence and scope of the four-year-old internment camp system, as well as the motivation behind it — draws on previously unanalyzed central government and state media reports to connect the program to highest rungs of power in Beijing. Documents on the drafting and approval of legislation in 2017 to set up the Uyghur internment campaign in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region demonstrate “that the framing of Xinjiang’s de-extremification through re-education campaign was undertaken with the direct knowledge of leading figures in China’s most powerful policy, legislative and advisory bodies,” the report says.
The “XUAR De-Extremification Regulation” was spearheaded by three important party-state bodies: Central Committee Xinjiang Work Coordination Small Group, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, and the State Administration for Religious Affairs, Zenz writes.
