Muslim Re-Education Camps in China

There is currently a major civil rights issue around the imprisonment and abuse of Uighur, Kazakh, and other types of Muslim minorities in China. China has always been a homogenous and xenophobic country, and their treatment of their perceived outsiders isn’t know for being particularly good, however, the government’s systematic imprisonment of Muslim minorities reaches an all new level. China has been attempting to purge cultural and religious identity that they see as a threat to the Chinese Communist party, since their values might prevent them from giving the unchallenged loyalty to the party that the government demands. Just some rules put in place in attempt to stifle Islamic identity and practice is the banning of headscarves, beards, religious teaching to children,and even Muslim sounding names. The passports of Muslim-Chinese citizens have also been revoked, preventing them from being able to escape the country. As of 2014, the Chinese government has been imprisoning Chinese Muslims in “Re-Education Camps” in Xinjiang without any charges or trials. These camps serve to brainwash Muslim minorities in order to forcefully assimilate them and erase their cultural and religious identity. In these camps, Muslims are forced to run, learn Mandarin, recite laws, and sing patriotic communist anthems, and if they refuse, they are severely beaten. It is estimated that there are anywhere from several thousand to a million people trapped in these concentration camps. People can be imprisoned if they are caught in a mosque praying, or with any kind of Islamic content on their phone (such as Arabic writing, or an image of a women wearing a hijab). Due to heavy censorship and police enforcement, people are unable to speak out. Already, several Islamic activists speaking out against this have been detained. The Chinese government attempts to justify their unfair imprisonment of innocent people with claims that it is in effort to “combat global terrorism” and ‘prevent extremist thought’. Playing off xenophobic fear mongering and racist stereotyping that portrays Muslims as dangerous terrorists. They continue to dismiss other countries’ concerns on the civil rights infringements and other criticisms with claims that the concentration camps are “Boarding schools where students eat and live for free” and insisting that they’re actually “educational training centers” and that the international claims of them being internment camps are lies. This situation is a heinous violation of these minorities’ civil rights and freedom of religion, despite whatever lies the Chinese government peddles with propaganda, the disgusting infringement of fundamental human rights present are undeniable. These modern day concentration camps hark back to the Nazi gas chambers, and the cultural genocide of an even larger size. Source
Another Source