Residents in Aksu Prefecture in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region celebrate the apricot harvest in June 2019. Photo: VCG

In an exclusive interview with the Global Times, the spokesperson of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region said on Monday that scholars who spread rumors that a million people were detained in the region actually work for the US intelligence agency, and they cooperate with anti-China forces in the US to smear China's Xinjiang policies. 

The so-called experts are Darren Byler, a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Washington and Adrian Zenz, an independent German researcher, who said China detains a million Muslims from Uyghur and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang. 

Byler and Zenz are core members of a study program on Xijiang's vocational education and training centers. A US intelligence agency is behind the study program, according to the spokesperson.

Disguised as experts, they made baseless remarks and slandered China's Xinjiang policies as much as possible, aiming to galvanize anti-China forces in the US. What they did was beyond the academic scope - using academic research as a cover, they slandered and smeared China, which are also the old tricks used by the US.

These centers in Xinjiang are vocational education and training institutions in nature. They employ a boarding school model which allows trainees to go back home on a regular basis and ask for leave to attend personal affairs. The training centers protect trainees' dignity and interests and do not allow any kind of insult or mistreatment. 

The spokesperson cited the remarks made by a reporter from Turkish DHA, who said, "Training centers offer humanized management and services. There is no torture or limit to an individual's freedom. Trainees live and study happily in the centers… the experience of visiting the training centers runs counter to what the Western media said, which made me deeply feel about the arrogance and hegemony of double standards used by the West."

"The so-called 1 million detained is nonsense and was made from nothing," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson noted that the number of trainees at the centers is not fixed as trainees graduate from the centers. Most of the trainees have graduated and live a good life.