China Undercover

China has enforced lock downs

in 14 more provinces and cities...

Before China was at the center

of the coronavirus pandemic...

Beijing tries to show it's in control of the epidemic.

a very different human tragedy.

The number of people that can be held is unprecedented.

The crackdown on Chinese Muslims.

"Frontline" goes undercover...

To expose a next-generation

surveillance state.

Now, "China Undercover."

Yesterday, I passed out.

I fainted twice.

miss you all so much.

A message-- from a woman to her husband--

secretly sent from somewhere over these mountains.

I'm leaving you this message . to see how the children are.

I haven't been able to contact my wife

for almost two years.

Two years ago, his wife, Muyeser,

went to visit her parents in China.

She never returned.

Our children have been deprived of a normal childhood

without their mother's love.

They're traumatized.

She left behind three children.

was hoping to see you all.

Soon after she disappeared,

Muyeser managed to smuggle out a short video

from what looks like a detention camp.

Over the past three years, an estimated two million

Chinese Muslims have been held in camps like this,

which the Chinese government has described as

"vocational education and training centers."

Muyeser's message ends with a farewell to her family.

Take care of the children and yourself.

March 2019.

Sadyrzhan is on his way from his home in Kazakhstan

to the Chinese border.

He's a Uyghur, a largely Muslim ethnic minority in China,

that has been targeted by the communist regime.

He's now looking for information about his wife

and when she might be released.

Filming is discouraged on the border,

so we're shooting discreetly on a phone.

I need a Chinese SIM card.

Why do you need one?

I've got friends there, that's why.

Sadyrzhan wants to call a contact

inside China who knows his wife.

But the Chinese authorities monitor calls

made from foreign numbers, so he needs to use a phone

with a Chinese SIM card.

What's the number?

:

He gets through to his contact.

Is everything OK with you at home?

Chinese technology is advanced enough

to be alerted by certain words, so they speak in code.

How is Muyeser?

She is studying.

Do you know

when she will finish studying?

"Studying" means she is being detained.

Without giving any reason, he hung up.

It was obvious from his voice

that he was scared when he was speaking.

Sadyrzhan's become a vocal advocate

for Uyghur rights.

The Chinese authorities target Uyghurs and Kazakhs

people from ethnic groups who are Muslims.

Currently, Xinjiang is an open prison.

Xinjiang is the

just beyond this border.

It means "new territory."

Uyghur Muslims-- with their own culture

and language-- have been living there for over 1,000 years.

But the territory was invaded by China's Qing dynasty

around 250 years ago and brought under Chinese control.

The regime tightly guards access to Xinjiang,

and journalists are not able to work freely there.

We decide to go undercover.

We've been warned that Uyghurs are under regular surveillance

and foreigners would be followed.

Here in Northern Thailand, we are introduced to someone

willing to help-- a businessman who often works

with journalists.

He's part of China's Han ethnic majority,

which will give him more freedom to travel and film.

But it's still dangerous.

We're disguising his voice and calling him Li.

This job is challenging but significant.

We'll be especially careful.

This investigation will be very stressful.

If caught secretly filming, he could be imprisoned.

We're going to find out what the real situation is in Xinjiang.

Xinjiang is China's largest region.

While Uyghurs and other Muslims are the majority,

for over 60 years, the government has encouraged

Han Chinese to settle here.

They make up around 40% of the population.

In early 2019, Li touches down in the regional capital, Ürümqi.

Xinjiang was a mysterious place for me.

I felt very nervous.

I felt police were everywhere.

The atmosphere was nerve-wracking.

Li is posing as a businessman,

looking for new opportunities while on vacation.

Some things can be filmed openly here.

But photography in many places is forbidden.

The police are everywhere

shots of them have to be taken quickly.

Traveling with a Uyghur taxi driver,

Li is told there's one rule for Han Chinese like him

at checkpoints and another for Uyghurs.

You go straight through.

But for us, we have to take everything off

including shoes and clothes. They open and check our bags.

Li secretly films himself going through

several checkpoints on the streets.

I found that for the Han Chinese, like us(Li):

you could freely move through security.

But Uyghurs were rigorously checked.

Their ID cards and belongings

needed to be scanned by the security machine.

In another taxi--

this time with a Han Chinese driver--

the conversation turns to relations between Han Chinese

and Uyghurs.

Xinjiang's main focus now is on maintaining stability.

There was a very big incident 10 years ago.

Li: An incident, in Urumqi

Yes, it was awful, a lot of people died.

In 2009, thousands of Uyghurs rioted after police

suppressed peaceful protests against the killing of two

Uyghurs in another part of China.

According to the government, almost 200 people--

mainly Han Chinese-- were killed.

During the violence and police crackdown that followed,

an unknown number of Uyghurs were killed

and thousands imprisoned.

This was a watershed moment

in the recent history of Xinjiang.

The view of Uyghurs among Han Chinese changed dramatically.

Then, three years later, China got a new leader.

Xi Jinping comes to power in

and he's invested a lot of energy

in establishing greater controls over speech.

There's a lot less room for dissent in, in Xi's China.

Now, what is China?

It's a place that is defined by Han Chinese traditions,

the Han Chinese official language of Mandarin.

And there is increasingly little space for Uyghurs

in this imagination of, of what China is.

After Xi Jinping became president,

a series of high-profile, violent attacks

took place across China.

Some were carried out by Uyghur separatists

and Islamist militants.

One was here in the heart of Beijing, in Tiananmen Square.

In total, more than 100, mainly Han Chinese,

were killed in the attacks.

From Xi's perspective, what's being fought in China

is a new version of the war on terror,

and that the Uyghurs are a problem

that are not going to go away, and that need to be dealt with.

According to Chinese government files

leaked to the New York Times,

President Xi told officials to unless the tools

of "dictatorship" to eradicate radical Islam in Xinjiang.

Chinese officials have dismissed this

as "total nonsense and a pack of lies."

Following the militants' attacks,

the Chinese authorities cracked down

on the entire Uyghur population and

launched a systematic assessment of every Muslim in Xinjiang.

You start out with 100 points,

and you're a safe person, and then for each category

that applies to you, you're deducted ten points.

Some of the categories are, for instance: Are you a Uyghur?

Are you between the ages of 15 and 55?

Do you have Islamic knowledge?

Do you pray regularly?

Do you have relatives living abroad?

Do you have a passport?

The government quickly realized that the number of unsafe people

that they were finding was quite large.

So, the state began to build out camps on a large scale.

The Chinese government

initially denied these camps even existed.

But over the course of a year,

satellite imagery revealed enormous, prison-like structures

being built.

Drone footage from Xinjiang appears to show

large numbers of shackled prisoners.

And thousands of Uyghurs living abroad suddenly lost contact

with relatives in China.

This is Gulzire, a Uyghur refugee living in Germany.

Over two years ago, she received a chilling voice message