The Guardian’s Lily Kuo reports on recently emerged drone footage of hundreds of blindfolded and shackled prisoners being led from a train by police. The footage, which was posted on YouTube last week, is believed to have been taken in Xinjiang in August of last year. Xinjiang has been the site of a mass detention program where an estimated 1.5 million Uyghurs have been or are being held in a series of internment camps, as part of a longer-running anti-terror campaign in the region. While authorities claim detention facilities are “vocational training” facilities, there has been evidence of forced labor, political indoctrination, abuse, and deaths inside the camps.

The video, posted anonymously on YouTube last week, shows what appear to be Uighur or other minorities wearing blue and yellow uniforms, with cleanly shaven heads, their eyes covered, sitting in rows on the ground and later being led away by police. Prisoners in China are often transferred with handcuffs and masks covering their faces. Nathan Ruser, a researcher with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s international cyber policy centre, used clues in the footage, including landmarks and the position of the sun, to verify the video, which he believes was shot at a train station west of Korla in south-east Xinjiang in August last year. […] Ruser said the detainees were most likely being transferred to prisons in Korla from Kashgar, where the crackdown has been particularly severe. The area is believed to be home to several re-education camps but fewer detention centres. “It counters the propaganda offensive China is trying to show,” he said, underlining the treatment of those within the penal system. [Source]

In a lengthy Twitter thread, some of which is embedded below, researcher Nathan Ruser describes how he came to his conclusions about the time and place of the footage:

4 days ago a video showing 3-400 detainees handcuffed & blindfolded at a train station in Xinjiang was uploaded to YouTube (https://t.co/GpEaZ7YkIK)

In this thread I’ll share how I’ve verified that this video was filmed at 库尔勒西站 (41.8202, 86.0176) on or around August 18th. pic.twitter.com/hr5xd8nahM — Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019

Firstly, let’s look at the video. It shows a screen recording of a dji drone which has captured hundreds of detainees (presumably Uyghurs) being led off of a train, and lined up – freshly shaven, blindfolded and handcuffed – at a train station. pic.twitter.com/wdlj8FAjGW — Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019

In terms of information to verify this video, it is quite scant. The title mentions that it shows something in Xinjiang, and the description says that it was ‘taken in China’ – “这些视频是在中国拍的”, which is not a lot to work with. — Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019

Moreover, this is the only video uploaded to a new account, but let’s look at what there is available for us to geolocate: building, cell-tower, blue buildings, carpark, trees, train tracks ect. pic.twitter.com/2smcvvrqcD — Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019

The biggest clue is the orientation map in the bottom left that says (after a bit of squinting & checking Baidu Maps) “巴音郭楞蒙 古自治州”, an autonomous prefecture in Xinjiang that is often largely synonymous with the city of Korla. This was clearly filmed to the NW of there. — Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019

The drone’s FPV camera is also pointing almost straight down the train tracks, which shows the orientation of the tracks at about 282° if you measure it. This narrows down the section of train tracks that it could potentially be. pic.twitter.com/DETYA0Fuh6 — Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019

The bigger clue lies in the 10km scale bar in the bottom left, which (on my screenshot) represents 6.48cm. The distance from the approx centre of Bayingol label to the location is 8.05cm (at a bearing of ~ 300°)

(8.05/6.48)*10 = 12.42km at a bearing of 300° from the label. — Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019

Feeding that into Google Earth gets you pretty bang on. You can see the building, the trees, the tracks, the car-park (which was in the process of being paved in the June 17th 2019 satellite image – important later!) pic.twitter.com/LN2Jjr7hO0 — Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019

In an interview with the Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s Erin Handley, Ruser further elaborates on how this footage counters Beijing’s propaganda on the situation in Xinjiang:

“They take journalists and diplomats on very guided, very manicured tours around the region, to particular camps to highlight what they call progress and human rights in the region. “However, this video undercuts that narrative and shows clearly the very inhumane treatment that detained individuals get in the system, in the crackdown that started in 2017 in western China.” […] “All the evidence points to this being standard practice in how this crackdown is being perpetrated. And it’s a very shocking visual reminder of that,” he said. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne described the video as “deeply disturbing”. [Source]

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose previous criticism of the campaign in Xinjiang was described as “lies” by Beijing, said that the campaign isn’t about counterterrorism, but part of “China’s attempt to erase its own citizens,” in a meeting with officials from several Central Asian countries that border Xinjiang. Al Jazeera reports:

“I want to make clear that China’s repressive campaign in Xinjiang is not about terrorism,” Pompeo told reporters on Sunday. “It’s about China’s attempt to erase its own citizens. We call on all countries to resist China’s demands to repatriate the Uighurs.” Pompeo made the comments after a meeting in New York with the foreign ministers of five Central Asian countries – Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan – ahead of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) this week, during which Washington is expected to confront China over the issue. US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan will host an event on Tuesday on the “human rights crisis in Xinjiang” in China, diplomats said on Friday. In recent years, Beijing has been putting pressure on countries to which Uighurs have fled, to send them back to China. [Source]

China’s foreign ministry again struck back at Pompeo’s criticism. CBS News reports:

The ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, said Chinese activities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Muslims are held in detention camps, are the same as de-radicalization efforts in other countries. […] Geng complained that American politicians “slandered China’s policy toward Xinjiang and grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs.” “These measures are no different in nature from the deradicalization and preventive counterterrorism measures taken by many other countries, including the United States,” Geng said at a regular news briefing. “The lies of U.S. politicians can’t deceive the world and only further reveals their ulterior political goals.” [Source]

The internment camps are the most extreme measures in a security crackdown in Xinjiang launched in 2014 in response to rising incidents of violence in the region and elsewhere in China. The crackdown has also included increasingly invasive and controversial policies mostly targeting Xinjiang and the Uyghur ethnic minority native to the region. Policies have included the limitation of Islamic dress, the banning of religious customs, and the encouragement of practices forbidden in Islam. Rights advocates see these controversial policies as responsible for exacerbating ethnic tensions in Xinjiang.

As Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang have faced increasingly repressive policies in recent years, researchers and journalists noted the relative religious freedoms enjoyed by the predominately Muslim Hui minority in China’s heartland. There have, however, been accounts of this group facing mounting repression and targeted surveillance. At the Washington Post, Gerry Shih reports on the fading hope of Hui people in Gansu that they would avoid the anti-Islam campaign that has been raging in Xinjiang for years:

Hope faded in April. Government cranes began appearing ominously over Hui mosques. A video surfaced on social media showing workers taking apart the Gazhuang mosque’s gold dome, then smashing it into the prayer hall. Local Hui saw an unmistakable metaphor: The Communist Party, which once handled religious life here with a light touch, now ran roughshod over it. “Women were crying; others, like me, couldn’t believe what was happening,” said Ma Ha, a 40-year-old owner of a noodle shop. “We had 40 years of religious freedom. The winds are changing.” […] That tide of “Sinicization,” as Chinese policymakers call it, is surging nationwide. A recent, unescorted trip through Gansu, a corridor that once ushered Silk Road caravans and Islam into imperial China, revealed an accelerating campaign to assimilate another Muslim minority, the Hui, a Chinese-speaking people with no recent record of separatism or extremism. The campaign targeting the Hui does not feature mass internment or pervasive digital surveillance, the most striking aspects of the Xinjiang crackdown. But it is a purge of ideas, symbols, culture, products — anything deemed not Chinese. It permeates life, in ways existential and mundane. […] [Source]

More from The New York Times’ Steven Lee Myers, who notes that Gansu is not the only region that appears to now be the target of a government directive to combat the influence of Islam in China: