Images leaked from the Xinjiang Police Files provide unprecedented evidence of China’s highly secretive system of mass incarceration in Xinjiang.
The files obtained by the BBC reveal the detention of the region’s Uyghur Muslims and other Turkic minorities and give mounting evidence that China is committing crimes against humanity in the region.
It reveals details about heavily armed units and exposes the prison-like nature of the so-called re-education camps.
In addition, the files expose a shoot-to-kill policy for those who try to escape.
Photos include shots of crying Uyghurs chained by military officials carrying batons and riot shields and headshots of up to 5,000 Uyghurs who are all detained for menial crimes.
The images reveal the inside of the camps for the very first time and also expose a chain of command leading all the way to China's President Xi Jinping.
The data reveals that 20,000 Uyghurs from just one county, Shufu, were imprisoned in camps between 2017 and 2018, on petty charges from growing a beard to failing to top their phone up with credit.
If that data applied to Xinjiang as a whole, not just Shufu, it would mean the detention of more than 1.2million Uyghur adults, according to the BBC.
The BBC's John Sudworth writes that the documents “provide some of the strongest evidence to date for a policy targeting almost any expression of Uyghur identity, culture or Islamic faith.”
The Government has continually claimed that the camps built across Xinjiang are simply “schools”, but the damning evidence starkly contradicts that claim.
“The truth is the education and training centres in Xinjiang are schools that help people free themselves from extremism,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in 2019.
Dr Adrian Zenz, a scholar at the US-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, previously sanctioned by China over his research on Uyghurs, said to the BBC that the material “blows apart the Chinese propaganda veneer”.
He called the documentation "unprecedented, raw and unmitigated."
The youngest detainee was Rahile Omer, who was just 15 at the time of her imprisonment, with the oldest being a 73-year-old.
Hundreds were jailed for listening to "banned lectures" or installing encrypted apps on their phones by so-called Chinese spies.
Many were imprisoned for a decade for allowing their phones to run out of credit, thus the Chinese Government accused them of avoiding technology as a way of hiding their activities.
Tajigul Tahir, 60, was sent to the camp because her son was suspected of having "strong religious leanings" because he declined to drink or smoke.
The source of the files claims they hacked, downloaded and decrypted them from a number of police computer servers in Xinjiang, before passing them to Dr Zenz who then shared them with the BBC.
Internal police protocols were also revealed, such as the routine use of armed officers in all areas of the camps.
Blindfolds, handcuffs and shackles are said to be mandatory for any “student” being transferred between facilities or even to a hospital.
The BBC successfully verified significant parts of the Xinjiang Police Files, including the identity of certain prisoners and photographs showing the extreme measures taken in detention centres.
