{"id":10737,"date":"2018-12-29T12:15:31","date_gmt":"2018-12-29T20:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=10737"},"modified":"2018-12-29T12:15:31","modified_gmt":"2018-12-29T20:15:31","slug":"chinas-reeducation-camps-for-muslims-are-beginning-to-look-like-concentration-camps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2018\/12\/29\/chinas-reeducation-camps-for-muslims-are-beginning-to-look-like-concentration-camps\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s reeducation camps for Muslims are beginning to look like concentration camps"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The government is buying cattle prods and police batons to use in Xinjiang.<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
By\u00a0Alexia Fern\u00e1ndez Campbell<\/a>alexia@vox.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0
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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.<\/em><\/figcaption>\u00a0Emmanuel Dunande\/AFP via Getty Images<\/cite><\/span><\/em><\/figure>\n
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The Chinese government\u00a0recently admitted<\/a>\u00a0that it\u2019s forcing religious minorities into \u201creeducation camps\u201d as part of its crackdown on extremism \u2014 but new details show that these centers have a lot more in common with concentration camps.<\/p>\n

Thousands of guards carrying spiked clubs, tear gas, and stun guns surveil the government\u2019s \u201cstudents,\u201d who are held in buildings ringed with razor wire and infrared cameras, according to a report\u00a0published Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0by the French news service Agence France-Presse.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cfree\u201d education and job training to counter the spread of terrorism and religious extremism.<\/p>\n

In one of the government documents, officials argued that to build new, better Chinese citizens, the reeducation centers must first \u201cbreak their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new report supports what\u00a0human rights groups<\/a>\u00a0and journalists have been saying for a while now: China\u2019s authoritarian government has grown increasingly brutal, and\u00a0its detention and torture<\/a>\u00a0of Uighur Muslims amounts to crimes against humanity under international law.<\/p>\n

China recently legalized the \u201creeducation centers\u201d<\/h3>\n

Earlier this month, the BBC\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Chinese authorities in Xinjiang had revised a law designed to promote the use of detention centers \u201cto carry out the educational transformation of those affected by extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Vox\u2019s Jen Kirby\u00a0notes<\/a>, China has previously\u00a0tried to deny<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0downplay<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>the 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 \u2014 like\u00a0studying communist propaganda and giving thanks<\/a>\u00a0to Chinese President Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n

A United Nations human rights panel\u00a0estimates that Chinese authorities have imprisoned<\/a>as many as 1 million Uighurs. But a\u00a0Hong-Kong based human rights group<\/a>\u00a0puts the number even higher: between 2 million and 3 million.<\/p>\n

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),\u00a0released a report<\/a>\u00a0earlier this month outlining China\u2019s serious human rights abuses and its campaign of \u201cstate-sponsored repression<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s one of the most chilling paragraphs in the committee\u2019s report:<\/p>\n

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Of particular concern is the mass, arbitrary, internment of as many as 1 million or more Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in \u2018\u2018political reeducation\u2019\u2019 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rubio and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who oversee the committee, proposed a bill earlier this month called the\u00a0Xinjiang Uyghur Human Rights Act of 2018<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are detention camps, these are reeducation camps, where people are killed, where they are tortured and they are brutalized in so many, many ways,\u201d Smith\u00a0said during a press conference<\/a>\u00a0announcing the committee\u2019s findings earlier this month.<\/p>\n

A State Department official\u00a0told reporters back in April<\/a>\u00a0that the administration was considering sanctions against China in response to the camps, but six months has passed and the administration has done nothing.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump hasn\u2019t even publicly acknowledged the fact that the camps exist.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Chinese authorities are rounding up entire villages in Xinjiang,\u00a0according to interviews conducted this summer<\/a>\u00a0by 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:<\/p>\n

\u201cEntire villages in Southern Xinjiang have been emptied of young and middle-aged people \u2014 all rounded up into re-education classes,\u201d\u00a0he said<\/a>. \u201cOnly the elderly and the very docile are left in the villages.\u201d<\/p>\n

The organization urged the United States, the European Union, and other nations \u201cto sanction top Chinese officials responsible for mass extrajudicial incarceration, discriminately targeting Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government is buying cattle prods and police batons to use in Xinjiang. By\u00a0Alexia Fern\u00e1ndez Campbell@AlexiaCampbellalexia@vox.com\u00a0\u00a0Oct 24, 2018 (vox.com) 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… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10737"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10738,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10737\/revisions\/10738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}