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China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang | Council on Foreign Relations
More than a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region. The reeducation camps are just one part of the government’s crackdown on Uyghurs.
www.cfr.org
The Chinese government has reportedly detained more than a million Muslims in what the Chinese government calls “reeducation camps” since 2017, with an estimated half a million still currently held in prison or detention. Most of the people who have been detained are Uyghur, (spelled alternatively as Uighur) a predominantly Turkic-speaking ethnic group located primarily in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang (新疆), one of five autonomous regions in China. (The others include Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Tibet.) Uyghurs in the region have also been subjected to intense surveillance, forced labor, family separation, and involuntary sterilizations, among other rights abuses.
The United States and several other foreign governments have described China’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide, while the UN human rights office said that the violations could constitute crimes against humanity. Chinese officials claim they have not infringed on Uyghurs’ rights and that the reeducation camps were closed in 2019. While international reports have verified that many of these centers are now closed, the government has reportedly converted some into detention facilities. However, obtaining an accurate assessment of the region is difficult, as the Chinese government tightly restricts journalists and foreign visitors’ access to Xinjiang.
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How many Muslims have been detained in China?
More than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, including ethnic Kazakhs and Uzbeks, have been detained since 2017, according to international researchers and U.S. government officials [PDF]. (Some watchdog groups put more recent estimates closer to 1.8 million). Many were held in the now-closed facilities that the Chinese government called “vocational education and training centers.” However, the most common terms used by international media organizations and researchers are reeducation camps, internment camps, and detention camps. While no official death toll has been released by the Chinese government, deaths in custody have occurred.Outside of the camps, detention facilities, and prisons, the eleven million Uyghurs living in Xinjiang—officially called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region—have continued to suffer from a decades-long crackdown by Chinese authorities. In 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping issued Revised Regulations on Religious Affairs, stating that religious activity must not be used to undermine the nation’s ethnic unity. In Xinjiang, there have been reports of employment discrimination, the demolition of mosques and sacred Islamic sites, bans on religious dress, and enforced disappearances.
When did mass detentions of Muslims start?
Experts estimate that reeducation efforts started in Xinjiang in 2014 and were drastically expanded in 2017. Following a series of attacks on civilians in 2014, such as a mass stabbing at a train station in Kunming, Yunnan, and bombings in Xinjiang’s capital, Ürümqi, the Chinese government cited terrorism concerns as a motivating factor for the crackdown.Beginning in 2017, experts and journalists documented the construction of new reeducation camps and the expansion of existing facilities for mass detention. Reuters journalists observing satellite imagery found that thirty-nine camps almost tripled in size between April 2017 and August 2018; they covered a total area roughly the size of 140 soccer fields. Similarly, German anthropologist and Xinjiang expert Adrian Zenz analyzed local and national budgets, finding that construction spending on security-related facilities in Xinjiang increased by 20 billion yuan (around $2.96 billion) in 2017. Zenz told Radio Free Asia in 2019 that his estimates for the number of internment camps in Xinjiang likely figure more than a thousand.
In late 2019, Xinjiang’s governor said that people detained in the reeducation camps had “graduated,” and Chinese authorities say they have the freedom to travel. But it is difficult for journalists to verify such claims, as access is highly restricted and speaking with local residents could put them in danger of detention. Independent reports have shown that some released detainees faced house arrest, movement restrictions, and forced labor.
Although journalists found that several camps indeed closed in late 2019, the following year, researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) identified [PDF] more than 380 suspected detention facilities using satellite images. They found that China refashioned some lower-security reeducation camps into formal detention centers or prisons; expanded existing detention centers; and constructed new, high-security detention centers throughout Xinjiang. (Chinese officials have said that ASPI is an anti-China tool funded by Australia and the United States.)
Instead of detaining people in reeducation camps, authorities now increasingly use the formal justice system to imprison people. In 2022, the Associated Press found that in one county, an estimated one in twenty-five people had been sentenced to prison on terrorism-related charges, all of them Uyghurs. According to a 2025 report [PDF] from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there are more than half a million people still being held in formal prisons or extrajudicial internment in the country.
Would a Chinese takeover of the world lead to the largest genocide of human beings in history, considering there are about 2 billion?
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Like China, Israel has also tried to deal with Islamic terror and also been accused of genocide for it.
At its earlies roots, those who wished to form a Zionist nation have been targeted by Islamic terror, starting with the the Grand Mufti Mohammed Amin al-Husseini whose sworn mission in life was to stamp out all Zionism.
Amin al-Husseini - Wikipedia
His reign of terror even repulsed Muslims in the region to the point of expelling him as Grand Mufti, only for him to circle back and join forces with Hitler. After the war, he was wanted for war crimes against Israel but evaded the Nuremburg trials as he fled to Egypt instead. Later, his nephew became Yassar Arafat, who became the leader of the PLO resistance against Israel.
But even the day Israel had formed, war was immediate as Islamic countries around Israel surrounded them for destruction, causing them to attack them preemptively. Outgunned and outmanned, they somehow survived anyway.
1948 Arab–Israeli War - Wikipedia
And again, they were attacked in 1967
Six-Day War - Wikipedia
And pretty much every day since, they have been attacked by proxies of Iran like Hamas and Hezbollah, launching rockets and terror attacks nonstop.
But Israel did not take the route of the Chinese. Instead, they tried a variety of methods of dealing with Islamic terror, such as building border walls, occasionally returning fire, and trying to negotiate a peace which led them to give Hamas the Gaza strip. Although accused of genocide, the population levels within Gaza steadily increased year by year, until the attack on 10/7 that turned out to be the largest genocide of Jewish people since the Holocaust. At that point, Israel decided to engage in a full out assault against Hamas, and was widely condmned by the world for it.
But even though Islamic terrorism leads the world in terrorism, the majority of the world insists that Islam is really a religion of peace. Therefore, such responses for dealing with them are criminal in their view, no matter how criminal the terrorism they inflict upon society may be. But it is puzzling, for example, that the UN focuses on condemning Israel more than China as they have written more resolutions against Israel than all the countries on earth combined, even though China admits that they have cut the Muslim population close to half of what it was through various means of sterilization and probably just flat out killing them all to the tune of millions. But, China has all the money, so the rest of the world, like even Iran, turn a blind eye to how they are engaged in an active genocide of Muslims.
The Western countries, however, seem top continue to welcome Muslims into their countries with open arms citing that most Muslims are peace loving. But as we see in the US, Islamic funding of US universities around the world are creating scenes like this.
I never would have imagined that it would be tolerated at major universities in the US to have students sing about the genocide of the Jews with impunity like this, and then to have nothing done about it by the powers that be at these universities and at the political level. Sure, they have their hearings and expose all of the nonsense, but then nothing is done about it per usual.
But then, America has always been for sale
Qatar pumping tens of billions into universities to help Muslim Brotherhood weaken US, ‘destroy democracy’
“This is the tip of the iceberg.”
nypost.com
So, what countries in your assessment has dealt the best with the peaceful religion known as Islam in your opinion? Again, I will state that most Muslims are peace loving, at least statistically, but you have a world population of about 2 billion people, or about 25% of the world population. So, just a fraction of them being mentally unstable with tendencies to focus on the controversial teachings of jihad means that they will continue to lead the way in terrorism around the world.
I liken Islam to the pit bull of world religions. Sure, your average pit bull is a fine dog as owners swear by them, however, if you ever hear of a dog killing a human being, 9 times out of 10 it is a done by a pit bull because they were bred to kill.
