May 12, 2021 / Source: The Bizz USA By Janet Reddy; Edited by Pallavi Vemuri *Content warning*: This article mentions rape and torture. Please do not read if you are sensitive to that topic.* Xinjiang, an autonomous region in China, is home to many ethnic minorities including around 11 million Uighur Muslims. It is here where China has built 380 internment camps coined for the purpose of “re-education”. However, more than 400 pages of internal Chinese documents that were leaked in 2019, details an insight as to how China is organizing this mass detention and what happens inside these camps. When these camps first began, detainees were told to recite Communist propaganda and were forced to eat bacon and drink alcohol, which is against their religious beliefs. Unfortunately, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Lately, women have been raped by Han Chinese men, have abortions, and implant contraceptive devices. There are also countless cases of experimental medical procedures, torture, and even death. It has been brought to the attention of the United Nations that large-scale organ harvesting is occurring in these camps, but China seems to deny the accusations. Furthermore, it is estimated that over one million Uyghurs have been detained. This issue is comporable in scale, magnitude, and immorality to the Holocaust as the tactics used in these camps are similar to those used by Hitler on the Jews. This also happens to be the largest incarceration of ethno-religious minorities since the Holocaust. Uyghurs that have not been detained aren’t spared from the immoral treatment by the Chinese government. Chinese officials forcefully live within their houses as “guests” to ensure that they are not practicing their religion at all. Moreover, while the situation is complex, many say that ethnic tensions caused by economic and cultural factors are the root cause of the not so recent violence. This may make one wonder as to why China appears to be Islamophobic. Evidently, Islam and China have a long history of largely peaceful interaction, but today’s rulers have seemed to lose track of that harmony and are implementing policies similiar to those mentioned above that are not only morally wrong but also self-defeating. China's current views also have a lot to do with their governing structure of communism. The Chinese government believes it is of utmost importance to see everyone uniform and “equal”, possibly the reason for the stringent policies in place. The world needs to sit up and pay attention to the horrors our Muslim brothers and sisters are facing. There will be no justice until we all are able to live peacefully in society and to achieve that, so we must use our voices for good. Spreading the word and continuing to talk about the issue is all we can do, but it actually can be the most effective action to carry out.
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