A recent report has revealed that thousands of China’s Uighur Muslim minority are being monitored and locked up in secretive detention camps. They are allegedly ‘retrained’ into Communist Party ways.
According to an estimate ten thousands of people have been imprisoned without trial for alleged political crimes that ranged from extremist thoughts to merely traveling or studying abroad.
Saying that China has been influenced by Islamic extremism, Chinese authorities are making efforts to use detentions and data-driven surveillance to impose a digital police state in the region of Xinjiang and over its Uighurs Muslims who are about 10 million in the region.
Treating Uighurs as terror suspects, they are being tracked on where they go, what they read, who they talk to and what they say, through the digital surveillance system.
Chen Quanguo, a Chinese Communist Party official, promoted the campaign against Uighurs in 2016. He vowed to hunt down Uighur separatists blamed for attacks that have left hundreds dead.
Rukiye Turdush, a Uighur activist in Canada lamented “So much hate and desire for revenge are building up,” said. “How does terrorism spread? When people have nowhere to run.”
Though the main purpose of the detention program appears to be indoctrination, the government has referred it as ‘vocational training.
According to a memo published online by the Xinjiang human resources office reveals that ‘free, completely closed-off, militarised’ training sessions are being conducted in March that last anywhere from 3 months to 2 years. Uighurs study Mandarin, law, ethnic unity, de-radicalisation, patriotism and abide by the ‘five togethers’ — live, do drills, study, eat and sleep together.
Southern Xinjiang, the vast desert basin from where many of the students came, is one of the most heavily policed places on earth.