Western reports called fabrications

Some foreign media outlets, including The New York Times and the Australian Broadcasting Corp, have fabricated and distorted reports about the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, which violates press ethics, a spokesman for the region said.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists recently published an article illustrating the "personal experiences" of multiple "victims", including Mirigul Tursun and Shaylagul Sawutbay. They said that they were harshly mistreated in a "concentration camp", some "detainees" were hung on a wall and they were allowed no more than two minutes to use the bathroom, and at least nine female detainees died due to the terrible environment and medical conditions, Beijing-based Global Times quoted the spokesman as saying.

In fact, the spokesman said, the education and training centers in Xinjiang are schools, and they are set up in accordance with the law for those who participated in terrorist or extremist activities in circumstances that were not serious enough to constitute a crime or that posed a real danger but did not cause actual harm. They were never "concentration camps" at all, the spokesman said, and Mirigul from the Uygur ethnic group has never studied at any center. She also lied in saying that her younger brother was abused, resulting in his death, in the training center, the spokesman said.