China Uighurs: Xinjiang legalises 're-education' camps

[Oh Buoy]

China’s reeducation camps for Muslims are begining to look like concentration camps

The government is buying cattle prods and police batons to use in Xinjiang.

By Alexia Fernández Campbell@AlexiaCampbellalexia@vox.com  Oct 24, 2018, 4:10pm EDT

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A woman takes part in a rally urging the European Union to pressure China to close its reeducation camps in Xinjiang, where nearly 1 million Uighur Muslims are detained. The rally was held in Brussels on April 27, 2018.  Emmanuel Dunande/AFP via Getty Images

The Chinese government recently admitted that it’s forcing religious minorities into “reeducation camps” as part of its crackdown on extremism — but new details show that these centers have a lot more in common with concentration camps.

Thousands of guards carrying spiked clubs, tear gas, and stun guns surveil the government’s “students,” who are held in buildings ringed with razor wire and infrared cameras, according to a report published Wednesday by the French news service Agence France-Presse.

AFP journalists who reviewed more than 1,500 publicly available government documents also describe disturbing purchases made by government agencies that oversee the so-called education centers: 2,768 police batons, 550 electric cattle prods, 1,367 pairs of handcuffs, and 2,792 cans of pepper spray.

These descriptions are a far cry from Chinese government propaganda that claims these centers in Xinjiang, the autonomous region in northwestern China where most Uighur Muslims live, provide “free” education and job training to counter the spread of terrorism and religious extremism.

In one of the government documents, officials argued that to build new, better Chinese citizens, the reeducation centers must first “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.”

The new report supports what human rights groups and journalists have been saying for a while now: China’s authoritarian government has grown increasingly brutal, and its detention and torture of Uighur Muslims amounts to crimes against humanity under international law.

China recently legalized the “reeducation centers”

Earlier this month, the BBC reported that Chinese authorities in Xinjiang had revised a law designed to promote the use of detention centers “to carry out the educational transformation of those affected by extremism.”

As Vox’s Jen Kirby notes, China has previously tried to deny or downplaythe existence of these centers. But human rights groups, witness testimony, and media reports have shown Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region being detained and tortured in mass numbers, and forced to undergo psychological indoctrination — like studying communist propaganda and giving thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

A United Nations human rights panel estimates that Chinese authorities have imprisoned as many as 1 million Uighurs. But a Hong-Kong based human rights group puts the number even higher: between 2 million and 3 million.

Members of Congress have been pressuring the Trump administration to take action. The bipartisan Congressional Executive Committee on China, led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), released a report earlier this month outlining China’s serious human rights abuses and its campaign of “state-sponsored repression.”

Here’s one of the most chilling paragraphs in the committee’s report:

Of particular concern is the mass, arbitrary, internment of as many as 1 million or more Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in ‘‘political reeducation’’ camps in western China. Reports indicate that this may be the largest incarceration of an ethnic minority population since World War II, and that it may constitute crimes against humanity.

Rubio and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who oversee the committee, proposed a bill earlier this month called the Xinjiang Uyghur Human Rights Act of 2018. The proposed legislation would give the US State Department resources to work with the UN to develop a response, leading to potential targeted sanctions on Chinese officials and broader economic sanctions against China.

“These are detention camps, these are reeducation camps, where people are killed, where they are tortured and they are brutalized in so many, many ways,” Smith said during a press conference announcing the committee’s findings earlier this month.

A State Department official told reporters back in April that the administration was considering sanctions against China in response to the camps, but six months has passed and the administration has done nothing.

President Donald Trump hasn’t even publicly acknowledged the fact that the camps exist.

Meanwhile, Chinese authorities are rounding up entire villages in Xinjiang, according to interviews conducted this summer by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a coalition of Chinese and international human rights groups. Here is just one alarming quote from a Chinese business executive, who is not an ethnic Uighur but who has lived in the region for decades:

“Entire villages in Southern Xinjiang have been emptied of young and middle-aged people — all rounded up into re-education classes,” he said. “Only the elderly and the very docile are left in the villages.”

The organization urged the United States, the European Union, and other nations “to sanction top Chinese officials responsible for mass extrajudicial incarceration, discriminately targeting Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.”

[Numero Veinticinco]

Yeah, I saw something about that earlier. Very disturbing. 

[Lee909]

Yeah saw something on BBC news

[Trumo]

'Reeducation'? 'Begining'?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Trumo said:

'Reeducation'? 'Begining'?

It's worse than I thought. Batons, prods and spelling errors.

 

[polymerpunkah]

Smacks of Mao and the Cultural Revolution.

 

(Or, God forbid, Pol Pot.)

 

I was just in Beijing. It's a huge modern metropolis, with all the mod cons.

 

But every day, tens of thousands of Chinese people stand in line for hours to shuffle by Mao's mummified corpse. Even though he let tens of millions of them die of famine.

 

A very strange place.

[ZonkoVille77]

Trump will be getting ideas...

[Strontium]

 

[Bjornebye]

Utter cunts 

[KMD7]

Wankers

[Bobby Hundreds]

Never forget!

 

Or just ignore because of the economic implications. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

Great bunch of lads. 

[Strontium]

There's a parliamentary petition on the go, only half as popular as the petition to stop puppy imports

 

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300146

[Rico1304]

Centrist cunt Majid Narwaz is currently on hunger strike to raise awareness.  
 

strange that other U.K. Muslim activists have been silent on it too.  

[Rico1304]

2 million people folks.  
 

They aren’t being oppressed by the West but I’m sure they don’t really care 

[Section_31]

Got a couple of mates who teach in China and they get right on my tits at times. Everytime they come back they're like "oh x, y and z is SO much better in China, Britain's really shit." 

 

I've drunkenly pointed out to them on a number of occasions that living on an enclosed western compound and teaching wealthy western kids doesn't quite constitute "living" in China.

[Numero Veinticinco]

Just now, Section_31 said:

Got a couple of mates who teach in China and they get right on my tits at times. Everytime they come back they're like "oh x, y and z is SO much better in China, Britain's really shit." 

 

I've drunkenly pointed out to them on a number of occasions that living on an enclosed western compound and teaching wealthy western kids doesn't quite constitute "living" in China.

I’ve heard this about so many countries that are clearly worse than living in the UK. It’s fucking annoying. I hate the way many Americans make out that their country is the best place in the world and is perfect, but I also hate the way so many Brits talk about the UK as if it’s Mogadishu or Beirut.  For all it’s many flaws, it’s one of the best places to live and we - most of us - are lucky to live here. 

[Bobby Hundreds]

I posted a comment in the guardian asking why is this not headline news. They deleted it. 

[Rico1304]

You know when I get accused of not caring about Jews, and just using it to get at Corbyn? It’s like those of you who only care about Muslims the day after a terrorist attack or when they live in Palestine.  

[Bobby Hundreds]

Were very very fortunate in this country doesnt mean the bad shit shouldn't be highlighted. Aside from the politicians and most of the media I utterly fucking detest the weather, grey bastard skies and drizzle. Just proper seasons a few months of summer actually being dry and bright, ill take it. That shows how fortunate we are the weather is one of my main gripes not being blind folded herded onto a train and sent to an "education" camp.

 

We should keep that standard of whining and holding power to account it seems very easy for a country to slide into misery.

[Em City]

11 hours ago, Rico1304 said:

2 million people folks.  
 

They aren’t being oppressed by the West but I’m sure they don’t really care 

 

2 hours ago, Rico1304 said:

You know when I get accused of not caring about Jews, and just using it to get at Corbyn? It’s like those of you who only care about Muslims the day after a terrorist attack or when they live in Palestine.  

 

"Me me me me me"

 

Not everything revolves around you. Perhaps try going one day without invoking your tedious culture war bullshit.

[Numero Veinticinco]

30 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Were very very fortunate in this country doesnt mean the bad shit shouldn't be highlighted.

Of course not, just that it’s not a shithole that I‘m so desperate to leave that I’d move to Senegal or Peru to in order to avoid. 

[Jose Jones]

4 minutes ago, Numero said:

Of course not, just that it’s not a shithole that I‘m so desperate to leave that I’d move to Senegal or Peru to in order to avoid. 

Peru is pretty fantastic to be fair.

Very grim shit China with the Uighurs.
 

I’m surprised a lot more hasn’t been made of it really considering Trump has been feisty where China is concerned, and there’s been a bit more pushback recently such as Huawei getting kicked off the UK 5G network.

 

China has done a pretty sterling job at creating economic power to give itself massive political power though. I guess this is showing with the media being reticent as well as politicians. Similar to Saudi on a slightly smaller scale.

[Bjornebye]

11 minutes ago, Jose Jones said:

Peru is pretty fantastic to be fair.

Very grim shit China with the Uighurs.
 

I’m surprised a lot more hasn’t been made of it really considering Trump has been feisty where China is concerned, and there’s been a bit more pushback recently such as Huawei getting kicked off the UK 5G network.

 

China has done a pretty sterling job at creating economic power to give itself massive political power though. I guess this is showing with the media being reticent as well as politicians. Similar to Saudi on a slightly smaller scale.

The fuck you got against Senegal? 

[J-V]

4 hours ago, Rico1304 said:

You know when I get accused of not caring about Jews, and just using it to get at Corbyn? It’s like those of you who only care about Muslims the day after a terrorist attack or when they live in Palestine.  

Oof...