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Description

Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group native to Xinjiang. They are distinct from the Han Chinese, the predominant ethnic group in China. The Chinese government has policies designed to suppress cultural identity and religion in the region (ex: Uyghurs traditionally follow Islam, and are barred by the government from naming children "Muhammad").

Especially since 2016, internment camps have been a part of the Chinese government's strategy to govern Xinjiang through the detention of ethnic minorities en masse.

Researcher Adrian Zenz estimates that a total of 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities had been extra-judicially detained in what he described as "the largest incarceration of an ethno-religious minority since the Holocaust", arguing that the Chinese Government was engaging in policies in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

According to 2020 study by Joanne Smith Finley, "political re-education involves coercive Sinicization, deaths in the camps through malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, withheld medical care, and violence (beatings); r*** of male and female prisoners; and, since the end of 2018, transfers of the most recalcitrant prisoners – usually young, religious males – to high-security prisons in Xinjiang or inner China. Other camp 'graduates' have been sent into securitized forced labor. Those who remain outside the camps have been terrified into religious and cultural self-censorship through the threat of internment."

Description

Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group native to Xinjiang. They are distinct from the Han Chinese, the predominant ethnic group in China. The Chinese government has policies designed to suppress cultural identity and religion in the region (ex: Uyghurs traditionally follow Islam, and are barred by the government from naming children "Muhammad").

Especially since 2016, internment camps have been a part of the Chinese government's strategy to govern Xinjiang through the detention of ethnic minorities en masse.

Researcher Adrian Zenz estimates that a total of 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities had been extra-judicially detained in what he described as "the largest incarceration of an ethno-religious minority since the Holocaust", arguing that the Chinese Government was engaging in policies in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

According to 2020 study by Joanne Smith Finley, "political re-education involves coercive Sinicization, deaths in the camps through malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, withheld medical care, and violence (beatings); r*** of male and female prisoners; and, since the end of 2018, transfers of the most recalcitrant prisoners – usually young, religious males – to high-security prisons in Xinjiang or inner China. Other camp 'graduates' have been sent into securitized forced labor. Those who remain outside the camps have been terrified into religious and cultural self-censorship through the threat of internment."