We want to call your attention to the horrible religious repression of muslims being carried out by the People’s Republic of China.
China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) and a partner NGO, Equal Rights Initiative, say they have found through interviews with people in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) that up to 3 million muslim Uyghurs have been detained against their will in as many as 44 political internment camps for two or more years for “re-education” and “de-radicalization.”
There are more than 10 million muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang; they are a minority ethnic group living amongst the Chinese Han majority.
Uyghurs have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule. Resentment also exists among Uyghurs over the perceived uneven distribution of proceeds from the rich mineral deposits in the region. In the past decade, hundreds of lives were lost to a mixture of riots, inter-community violence, premeditated attacks and the police response; culminating in 2013, with a Chinese government attack on Uyghurs in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, claiming two lives. The next year, 31 people were slaughtered by knife-wielding Uyghur attackers at a train station in the Chinese city of Kunming, more than 2000km away from Xinjiang. Although relatively small in terms of fatalities, it rattled the foundations of the Chinese state.
That’s when Chinese authorities tightened their grip and began rounding up Uyghurs who had “problems with their thoughts.” Dozens of large prison-type structures were built across Xinjiang. Chinese authorities said the main purpose of the facilities was to”combat extremism, through a mixture of legal theory, work skills and Chinese language training.” But thousands of Uyghurs ended up in an internment camps for innocuous reasons, such as: carrying a picture of a woman wearing a niqab; making a pilgrimage to Mecca; not paying a water bill on time; etc. The Chinese have locked up millions of muslim Uyghurs without trial or charge and no access to any legal due process.
China now claims these “re-education camps” have been a success, saying “In the past 21 months, no violent terrorist attacks have occurred and the number of criminal cases, including those endangering public security, has dropped significantly.”
Of course, no one knows the real effect of these internment camps on the millions of Uyghurs who have lost individual freedom, human dignity and an inalienable right to practice their religion … as most of the interned have not yet been released.
Thankfully, the world is starting to wake up to this human calamity, due in large part to the CHRD’s heroic efforts and the BBC’s enlightening reports. On November 6 in Geneva, Switzerland, a Chinese government delegation will face questions over the country’s human rights record and receive recommendations for improvement from UN Member States. Muslim internment camps will no doubt be at the top of the agenda. Public humiliation in front of all freedom loving nations is a very good start, but biting sanctions are what will force China to mend its ways. We’re pleased with the outing of China’s outrageous crimes, but there’s more work to do.
We sourced most of the material and pictures for this posting from an excellent BBC report on the Chinese muslim internment camps. We highly recommend you visit the report site, as it includes many related facts and figures, detailed satellite images of the internment camps, and harrowing stories you must read to believe.
