A security firm run by Erik Prince has drawn criticism with plans to build a training centre in Xinjiang, a far-western province where Uighur Muslims have been rounded up and forced into internment camps.
Frontier Services Group, a Hong Kong-listed security and logistics firm, inked a deal with the Kashgar Caohu Industrial Park, on January 11, according to a statement on the company’s website, without providing further details.
The signing was attended by officials from Xinjiang’s Tumxuk city, and from Citic Guoan, a subsidiary under state-owned conglomerate Citic Group.
Mr Prince is co-founder and deputy chairman of Frontier Services. He is a former US Navy SEAL, and founder of Blackwater, a US military contractor whose presence in Iraq and Afghanistan sparked debate over the role of private security working for the US government in war zones.
The expansion of FSG into Xinjiang is controversial given a massive surveillance and detention program that the United Nations estimates has forced as many as one million into internment camps.
Beijing has defended the existence of the camps, calling them “re-education” centres that are part of wider and necessary anti-terrorism efforts.
Suppression of the Islamic faith is occurring in other provinces of China as well, The Telegraph has found. In Ningxia, a province in central China, Arabic language signs are scratched out and Communist Party members are banned from attending prayers at mosques.
Growing ties between FSG and Chinese state-backed ventures have also prompted criticism that Mr Prince, the brother of US education secretary Betsy DeVos, is helping further policy objectives for an American rival.
Last March, Chinese state-owned Citic became the largest shareholder in FSG after increasing its stake to nearly one-third of the company. Senior Citic executives also sit on FSG’s board.
The capital raising was aimed at supporting expansion in Southeast Asia, with about HK$121 million (£11.8 million) reserved for setting up a “security logistics business in Pakistan and Xinjiang, China including establishing training facilities, and buying security equipment and vehicles,” according to a stock exchange filing.
In 2017, FSG purchased a stake in a security training facility in Beijing, and has trained Chinese military and police.
Xinjiang is a major link on China’s massive “Belt and Road” campaign, a global infrastructure investment plan meant to help boost Beijing’s clout and business ties around the world.
It also represents a big business opportunity for security firms like FSG to guard and handle logistics for everything from infrastructure assets to high-level company officials.
Calls to FSG’s Beijing offices were unanswered and the company’s Hong Kong headquarters didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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