Beijing, China, Nov 25, 2019 / 15:00 pm
Leaked government documents from China have shed light on the country's extensive network of internment camps for religious minorities, and exposed the use of an algorithm to determine who will be arrested and detained.
The documents were acquired by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and were released on Sunday, Nov. 24 to a variety of media outlets. The ICIJ translated the document into English and published both the translated and original copies on its website.
China denies the documents are authentic and says they are fabricated and "fake news." According to the ICIJ, multiple linguists and other experts on China have determined that they are authentic and are written in a similar manner to other classified documents from China.
One of the documents appears to be part of a manual or handbook for the operation of the internment camps, which are referred to as "vocational skills education and training centers." The handbook is dated to 2017, when the internment camps first began operating, and is marked as "confidential."