An old man died crushed by a wall. The CCP immediately mobilized 171 agents to investigate—not the incident but who had reported it to Radio Free Asia.
by Kok Bayraq
According to a recently leaked document from China, a news item broadcast in 2018 by Radio Free Asia about the death of an elderly person in Kashgar shocked the entire prefecture. The report was about an 80-year-old man brought to village of Yekshenbebazar in Yopurga County in northern Kashgar prefecture, where his children were being “re-educated.” He had been crushed by a wall that fell in his decrepit house. All the officials in the county where the incident took place were alarmed and “decisively“ dealt with the “leaking incident.”
The newly leaked document is titled “Reflection report of Yopurga County on the bad impact of US’s Radio Free Asia’s news about the county.” In the document, the county leaders, with an overwhelming tone of regret and guilt, apologize to the prefectural authorities for allowing such a leak of secret information.
The document was sent to the author by an anonymous source. The authenticity of the document is proved by matching its contents with the RFAs news archive.
The news from RFA that was mentioned in the document aired on March 8, 2018.
According to the document, at midnight, on March 9, 2018, the county government held a countywide mobilization meeting and began an investigation: about the news leaking, not about the death of the old man. Four separate working groups of 171 people launched a two-day operation against all families known to have foreign connections in the county. They examined 328 home phones and 171 office phones in Yekshenbebazar, where the news leaked, and analyzed the last three months’ call records. All phone numbers that had been used for more than three years were changed to avoid similar incidents and to prevent further leaks. All those responsible and suspects in the county were held accountable “according to the law.”
The leaked document was written on March 11, 2018—within three days of the RFA’s news airing.
Kashgar is a prefecture with a population of 4.5 million, and Yopurga is a county with a population of nearly 200,000. How can a single piece of news shock the governing body of a large prefecture the size of a small country so much? Is this the paranoia of a petty dictator, or the typical criminal psychology of a genocidal murderous state in the midst of its crimes?
An explanation and definition of the “leaking mistakes” in the document provides some clues to the answers: “Despite the prefecture’s repeated warnings and our careful delivery, the secrecy awareness of some cadres and residents is still not adequate. We violated the prefecture’s ‘two never’ policy [to] ‘never accept calls from abroad’ and ‘never speak, even if you unknowingly accept it.’”
The document goes on to state, “Our understanding and implementation of the orders of ‘keep the rules and regulations of vocational training centers confidential’ is insufficient…We failed to follow the ‘4 breaks’ order, especially the order to break their connections.”
The latter refers to the order to “Break their [of the Uyghurs] lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins,” which appeared in other leaked documents from China and is seen by the international community as one of the strongest pieces of evidence of the Uyghur genocide.
Thus, through this document, Yopurga County apologizes to the governor’s office for not breaking strongly enough the “connections” of the Uyghurs and expresses its determination to correct this “mistake.”
The document does not say how many people were punished for this “crime” of leaking state secrets.
The news referenced in the document is ordinary compared to other news broadcast by the Uyghur Service from RFA. It was not translated into English and was not yet known by the international public. If ordinary news shocked the prefecture this much, what happened when RFA reported breaking news in the past? What about when it was reported that 120,000 Uyghurs were detained in a camp in Kashgar, when the location of the five camps in Ghulja was discovered for the first time, and when 156 people died in camps in Kucha? Which officials and how many personnel acted in those days, and how many people were punished for their involvement?
Of course, the officials of the places where the breaking news were reported did not get any less nervous than in Yopurga County.
According to RFA’s original report, the elderly man died under collapsed walls during the government’s implementation of a new village restoration project. The death was also caused by the fact that his children had been taken to the “vocational” camp and he had been left alone at home. At the time, RFA reported this incident based on information provided by the local hospital, but county officials denied it happened.
In the leaked document, officials confirmed the accuracy of RFA’s news by stating, “This death occurred because we disregarded the order to notify the neighborhood committee when we demolished the house…When the separatists were given the opportunity, they actually politicized a construction incident and tarnished the image of our country.”
Why was there such uneasiness about one person being killed when Uyghur social media platforms report on the death in the camps almost every day? Perhaps the worry was not for the dead but rather for the possibility of the world finding out the truth on this and other cases.
Whatever the reason, the point of note for the world community is this: What you see in this document is the true intent and spirit of China—a superpower candidate in the 21st century that wants to bring a new order and new rules to the world.
