More secrets leaked

Leaked government documents outlining the need to prevent escape, double lock doors and constantly monitor detainees in China's network of internment camps in Xinjiang refute Beijing's defence of "vocational education centres" in the region, experts say.

Obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and published by 17 media outlets worldwide on Sunday, the documents show the strict protocols governing life in the camps in Xinjiang, where an estimated one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are held.

In one document, local officials are told to monitor inmates at all times -- including during toilet breaks -- to prevent escape.

Staff are also banned from befriending inmates and engaging in "personal interactions" to prevent "collusion", the document read.

"It shatters (the Chinese Communist Party's) CCP's narrative about these camps as benign vocational training centres where Uighurs and other Chinese Muslim(s) willingly undertake training," said James Leibold, an expert on ethnic relations in China and a professor at Melbourne's La Trobe University.

Instead, the documents outline "in the Party's own words... the calculated, coercive, and extrajudicial nature of these detentions," he told AFP.

The leak comes one week after The New York Times reported, based on more than 400 pages of internal papers it had obtained, that Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered officials to act with "absolutely no mercy" against separatism and extremism in a 2014 speech following a Uighur militant attack on a train station.

After initially denying their existence, China acknowledged that it had opened "vocational education centres" in Xinjiang aimed at preventing extremism by teaching Mandarin and job skills.

In light of ICIJ's investigation, China's foreign ministry remained dismissive, with spokesman Geng Shuang yesterday accusing "some media" of "smearing China's counter-terrorism and anti-extremism efforts in Xinjiang".

The Chinese embassy in London denied such documents existed, telling the Guardian, one of the partners in publishing the memos, they were "pure fabrication and fake news".