Thousands of terror-linked Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities are being held in Chinese re-education camps without contact with their families under a policy designed to counter extremism and terrorism in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang.
The Uyghur Muslims are a Turkish ethnic minority that practice Islam and reside primarily in China and parts of Central Asia, are responsible for several terrorist attacks and support a Muslim separatist insurgency. For decades, around 11 million Uyghur have been subjected to surveillance, arrest and alleged human rights violations, rights groups say.
China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.
Newsweek More than 120,000 Uyghur Muslims are estimated to be detained in so-called “re-education” centers in China’s Western Xinjiang region, according to human rights groups. Tens of thousands of people are allegedly detained in the city of Kashgar alone. The facilities are reportedly squalid and overcrowded, and inmates are forced to sing songs praising the Chinese Communist Party and renounce their religious beliefs.
The camps are now formally referred to as “Professional Education Schools,” after being called “Socialism Training Schools” and other names since their early 2017 inception as “Counter-extremism Training Schools,” the official said.
CNN Tensions have remained high in Xinjiang — a resource-rich area long inhabited by the Turkic-speaking ethnic Uyghurs — following a spate of violent Islamic attacks in recent years. The Chinese authorities have blamed the incidents on Muslim Uyghur separatists seeking to establish an independent state.
While activists CNN spoke to couldn’t confirm the figure reported by RFA, they say it fits with the increasingly bleak picture for the 10 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, where the government has been waging unrelenting campaigns against what it calls the forces of “terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.”
Kanat and other human rights advocates describe, citing sources on the ground, how people supposedly prone to influences of Islamic extremism undergo a “brainwashing” process inside the detention camps — often housed in converted schools or government buildings.
Activists say the regional government, now led by a hardline Xi loyalist, has not only continued to arrest and imprison many Uyghurs but also increasingly relied on high-tech tools to keep the population in check. They cite examples ranging from ubiquitous surveillance cameras, to mandatory GPS tracker installation in cars and DNA collection for all residents aged 12 to 65.
The authorities also enacted a sweeping anti-extremism law last year, with long beards, veils in public and home-schooling all on the ban list, prompting new denunciations from international human rights groups.
Amnesty International has said Uyghurs face widespread discrimination in housing, education and employment as well as curtailed religious freedom in their homeland. Other critics have linked the rise of violence in Xinjiang to Beijing’s repressive reign there — a claim the government vehemently denies.
Critics of Beijing’s Uyghur policy see growing persecution in Xinjiang, as the authorities intensify their crackdown and forced political indoctrination spreads. “These campaigns are purportedly about counter-extremism and counterterrorism, but … it’s really about surveillance, control and assimilation,” said Wang, the Human Rights Watch researcher.
“The real intention of the Chinese government is to eliminate the Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group,” Rebiya Kadeer, a longtime exiled Uyghur leader who recently stepped down as president of the World Uyghur Congress, told CNN in an interview in Washington last year.
“Religious suppression, cultural restrictions, Uyghur language ban — all this repression in Xinjiang only makes the Uyghurs hold on to their identity more firmly,” she added.
Uighurs caught trying to join ISIS:
Uyghurs, like the ‘Palestinians’, are unwanted even by their own Sunni brothers in Muslim lands. Wherever they go, it just problems. I would say it’s the same for the Myanmar Rakhine Muslims, just trouble. You know it’s bad when even their own don’t want them living with them.
Send them to the GULAGS to give them the taste of their own medicine!
They are only giving them another extremist ideology on top of one that they already have.
China gets this fact that the cult of islam is the problem. Well done in their efforts to control the rabid monsters of islam.
If the muslims in China had behaved in a civil manner,instead of terrorising others. They could have stayed in Turkey, but they went to China for a better life, but were trying to destroy life for the indigenous Chinese.
It seems no one criticises their Jihad,but when they get a little of their own medicine,and start playing the victim again,to many take their side.
We could do with government in Europe that looks after their own people when under attack, as we now are.
Instead of betraying us,as they are doing at present.
China is entitled to protect its country and society from islamic supremacism – no matter what any UN agency or NGO thinks about Nationalist protection.
China needs to stop contributing to the extinction of elephants, bears, tigers and rhinos and simply get on with the extinction of moslems.
Totally agree. Although I do admire them for the crackdown I have always hated their rampant animal cruelty.
Hard to feel sympathy for the Uyghur muslims, since in every other instance, muslims proliferate to become majority. Then they will be in charge.
what is sad is that it seems that only totalitarian states fight back against muz evil. i am waiting for the masses in Europe to fight back.
Watch that the dumbocrats and libs try to make some sort of equivalence between American enforcing immigration law and Chinese communist policy. We never should have tolerated the invasion that Obumer brought to our shores. But that speaks to the ignorance of the typical American voter….The way to protect our freedoms is to know and understand the Constitution . Every American needs to understand why the framers of the Constitution did what they did. Bring back Civics to public schools…It’s all related
Islam has defined itself with a 1400 year history of not being able to integrate with any1. Isolate them and let them sink or swim. Their inbreeding will be the death of this evil cult.
The current Chinese government has increased suppression of all religion and dissent. While it’s good that they are preventing another civil war with Muslims (like the ones in the 1800’s that killed tens of millions), the overall changes in China are sinister.
Yet not a word of protest from the left eh? Oh wait China is supposed to be their model communist country that is why.
In the dopey beyond belief western so called EU it’s quite the opposite. Our once free countries are now re-education camps – for indigenous. God help us when our divided masses start to push back. How could anyone support or allow such a disease loaded obviously deadly disease to go condom and conform free? We need to start getting radically honest and very patriotic. No more if ands and muslim gas. I imagine.
Good job china. Every non Muslim nation should adopt Chinese way of dealing these Muslims terrorists.
“Yoghurt Muslims” vs. Han Chinese …. I have to go with the Han Chinese !” Rincoln Appergate Han
If I was China I would send them all back to Turkey where they belong.
These detention camps are not brainwashing, Muslums are already brainwashed. They are deprogamming centers- a good theory, but when they just go back to worshipping the devil allah, is not much use.
I hope the Chinese are strict with their one child per family policy with the Muzzrats, because their jihad is, of course, overbreeding as usual.
Wow, the Chinese and Japanese have the right idea. We need to adopt some of their successful methods. I envy the courage of their leaders.
“Amnesty International has said”
Amnasty int. is a pile of idiots. They can’t even differentiate between right and wrong much less between good and evil. Who gives a damn what the vile Oogore muzslime think about anything. China is becoming a deadly totalitarian state again but at least the damned muzslime will be slapped into place.
hi don when do you think the shit is really gonna hit the fan , here down under one is not allowed to look after ones family as in what the early west was like , the crims run the place now and ice or methaly amphetimines are rampant . most certainly we are in those times as said by earlier prophets really scary ..,, at the local school today the Islamic folks are at their usual stance ,, just rude ,do not talk to the folks that have lived here for a very long time , mind you they are only 1% of the population ,, wait and see smiles WAYNEY
Wayney you ask a serious question I give a serious answer. I am watching the M E very closely of course, but there are so many fuses burning on so many bombs in so many locations, it’s not easy to pinpoint. I do suggest to anyone who thinks Bible prophecy has relevance to be looking at Damascus. If/when Damascus is completely “destroyed overnight never to be lived in again,” Israel will be blamed, whether they did it or not, and will be very quickly attacked by every nation who she shares a border with. Israel will win that war, but not very long thereafter a much larger coalition will gather, including Russia, that will attack Israel. A truly vast army that will be about 85 to 90 percent destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of muzslim will die, which will be a good thing that will shut up the izslime followers a lot.