A new major leak on China’s internment camps

Six internal documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists shed new light on China’s crackdown in the Xinjiang region, where a million or more ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others have been detained over the past three years.

The most significant document is a secret directive on managing the camps that describes their inner workings: round-the-clock video surveillance to prevent escapes, a scoring system for inmates to determine whether they would be released, and blanket secrecy, including barring employees from bringing in mobile phones.

The documents were provided by Uighur overseas networks and scrutinized for authenticity by dozens of journalists in 14 countries. They add to the revelations from 403 pages of documents that a member of China’s political establishment shared with The Times this year.

Beijing’s position: The government rejects criticism of the camps and describes them as job-training centers that use humane methods to fight the spread of Islamic extremism.