Xinjiang’s Muslim detention centers now legal

This is one of the poses the Chinese
government uses to torture inmates
in centers that target Muslim
ethnic minorities.
(Photo: ChinaAid)

ChinaAid

(Urumqi, Xinjiang—Oct. 12, 2018) The Chinese government officially legalized the existence of internment camps used to imprison Muslims in the country’s Xinjiang region on Tuesday, following months of illegally holding innocent people on false suspicions of terrorism.

The new legislation specifies that such camps, officially termed “occupational skills education centers” and “vocational training centers,” can be used to imprison “people influenced by extremism,” according to The Guardian. However, China considers a wide variety of common activities, such as posting religious texts on social media platforms and making plans to visit relatives abroad, as extremist when they are committed by a Muslim, leading to the mass arrest of innocent people.

According to the United Nations, more than 1 million people have been imprisoned in these centers, which torture inmates and deprive them of food and water until they proclaim their allegiance to the Communist Party. Local residents say that many of them wish for death and suffer mental breakdowns.

The Guardian also states that the new legislation orders that the centers teach prisoners Mandarin, provide “ideological education, psychological rehabilitation and behaviour correction,” instruct inmates in the law, and give them occupational training.

Because the region is comprised primarily of ethnic minority Muslims, people are often subjected to scrutiny because of their race, and many have had their passports confiscated, trapping them in the country. If both parents are arrested, their children are placed in orphanages, The Guardian states.

ChinaAid joins the international community in exposing and condemning Xinjiang’s treatment of ethnic minority Muslims in order to stand against these atrocities and uphold religious freedom, human rights, and rule of law.


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Xinjiang’s Muslim detention centers now legal

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