For this post I’d like to talk about a topic that has always both troubled and fascinated me since I’ve begun studying about China. That being, the re-education camps that the Chinese government has set up in Xinjiang province for their Uighur population. Uighur’s being the Turkic, Muslim minority that is based mainly in China, but also Uzbekistan, Turkey, Russia, Australia, and the U.S. The Chinese government has carefully constructed a narrative around these camps, claiming that they are “voluntary vocational camps” where people come to learn new job skills, and most importantly, are free to leave. However, what these camps have actually been revealed to do is hold Uighur peoples in them, until they can learn to be “good Chinese citizens who also speak Mandarin”. There have been horror stories of these camps leaked to the press and yet, nothing has been done about them up to now. Stories have come out about the conditions of the camps not just from the former inmates, but also from former staff who have fled China. This CNN article reveals the stories of a former staff member at one of the camps who fled to Kazakhstan. “Overflowing toilets in overcrowded cells. Food and sleep deprivation. Forced injections”. “Those who cannot learn fast enough or meet daily goals are deprived of food…For those who were not easily taught or who fought back against the ideology, Sauytbay claimed, even darker methods of coercion were used”. These kinds of things are happening to innocent people living in China every day because of their ethnicity and their religion and the international community is doing nothing to stop it because the backlash from China and their allies would be heavy. I’m not sure what the right answer is here, but I know that the world cannot stand idly by and let this happen to innocent people.
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