F OR A YEAR or more the Communist Party has feigned bafflement when asked to comment on evidence that it has detained without trial at least several hundred thousand Muslims, and perhaps more than 1m, in the far-western province of Xinjiang. On October 16th it changed tack, abandoning its denials and loudly defending the internments. A report broadcast on state television contained footage said to have been shot within one of the many “vocational and educational training centres” that China has built or renovated since 2016, when it began ramping up measures against separatism and religious extremism which it says threaten the region. The report suggested that China’s methods for preventing terrorism could serve as inspiration for others.

The 15-minute news package—filmed in and around an institution in the town of Hotan in southern Xinjiang—featured male and female detainees in government-issued tracksuits receiving Chinese-language instruction, lessons in law and politics and training in such trades as carpentry, baking and sewing. After class, inmates played chess in a small air-conditioned dormitory; some took folkdance lessons. “My thinking was simple,” remarks one inmate, speaking of the time before he was sent to the institution, “My life was poor.” “I can’t imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t come here,” adds another.

In addition to the video, Xinhua, the state news agency, published an interview with Shohrat Zakir, one of the Xinjiang region’s bosses. Mr Zakir insisted that the party had made Xinjiang safe from “bombings, assassinations, poisoning, arson” and other perils. He said that the Xinjiang government aimed to “educate and save” people suspected of minor offences, but provided no details of how many people have entered its camps or how long they might have to stay there. He said China’s actions combined “punishment with leniency” and implied that it was fulfilling a counter-terrorism pledge it had made to the UN . He emphasised that detainees’ education, food and shelter were all generously provided free of charge.

The re-education system’s public unveiling was a grim vindication of sorts for journalists, academics and campaigners who have been monitoring its development and who had pressed the government for an explanation. But the party’s spin was galling. People who have worked or spent time in Xinjiang’s re-education camps say that their population includes many run-of-the-mill types whom the officially atheist Communist party has somehow calculated to be overly religious. They say the educational content includes dubious tasks such as the learning of party songs, that some detainees have been made to consume pork and alcohol as punishments, and that there have also been instances of physical abuse. In October Human Rights Watch, a campaign group, flagged reports that the party has been sending children of detained parents to government-run orphanages even when other family members are available to care for them. The suspicion is that authorities would like to part even moderate Muslims from their beliefs.

In advance of their propaganda push officials in Xinjiang had revised and clarified the region’s public-security regulations, perhaps to give officials slightly more scope to argue that the detentions are compatible with Chinese law. The party may be gambling that a stauncher defence of its activities will help deflect growing international condemnation. But the main point of the propaganda push, in all likelihood, is to convince ordinary Chinese that it is not up to anything unreasonable in Xinjiang. Who, after all, could object to free baking and folk-dancing classes?