Human Rights Violations in China

In China, an ethnic group known as the Uyghur people have been persecuted relentlessly by the Chinese government. The majority of Uyghur people are muslim, which clashes with China's strict policies of atheism. In the Xianjiang region, where most Chinese Uyghurs live, there is a full on police state with extensive restrictions on religious activities and Uyghur culture. The Chinese government claims that these restrictions are to monitor for "religious extremism" which includes owning religious books like the qua ran, owning books about Uyghur culture, growing a beard, having a prayer rug, quitting smoking or drinking, and several other restrictive things. Along with this, the Chinese government has been sending Uyghurs to internment camps which are called "re-education camps". It is estimated that there is somewhere between 100,000 to one million Uyghurs being forcefully detained in these camps. The objective of these camps is to erase the cultural and religious identity of the Uyghur people, and change their religious views as well. Muslims are forced to do things seen as a sinful in Islam, such as eat pork and drink beer. There have also been many reports of physical and verbal abuse by the prison guards, and there are also reports of innocent people being detained due to the actions of their family members. Initially, the government denied that the camps even existed, but they have since changed their story to say that they exist to combat terrorism. This is a total violation of human rights and civil rights, and some sort of action needs to be taken by the worlds governments to prevent this. This is a cultural genocide in it's purest form and something should be down about it.