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Reuters
According to reports, one million Uighurs have been arrested
West China, the Xinjiang region, has legalized "vocational training centers" for Muslim Uyghurs, while the international community is increasingly worried about large-scale disappearances in the region .
Xinjiang said the centers would attack extremism through a "transformation of thought".
Human rights groups say that detainees are required to swear allegiance to President Xi Jinping and criticize or renounce their faith.
In August, China denied allegations that it detained a million people.
Officials attending a United Nations meeting on human rights admitted that Uyghurs "deceived by religious extremism" were being rehabilitated and resettled.
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Xinjiang has experienced cycles of violence and repression for years. China accuses Islamist militants and separatists of orchestrating the conflict.
What does Chinese law say?
Xinjiang's new legislation is the first detailed indication of what China is doing in the region.
Examples of behaviors that may lead to detention include the broadening of the concept of halal – which means that Islam is permissible – to areas of life outside of the diet, the refusal to watch television, and the public radio and prevent children from receiving public education.
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China said its network of detention centers would also teach Mandarin Chinese, legal concepts and provide vocational training.
Rights groups criticized the move. Human Rights Watch's Sophie Richardson said that "the words on paper describing vast grotesque violations of human rights do not deserve the term" law ".
New law bans promotion of religion
Michael Bristow, BBC News
By giving these camps a legal basis, China seems to have confirmed what many have been saying for months: organizing a series of re-education camps for Xinjiang Uyghur Muslims in the name of fighting extremism.
In recently published regulations detailing the camps, China has given them a vague-sounding name. He calls them "vocational training and vocational training centers".
But it's clear that their goal is not just to give people the opportunity to get a better job.
The regulation says that they are for people "influenced by extremism". It is a question of correcting bad behavior and providing prisoners with psychological counseling and ideological education.
The camps are part of a broader attack against Islamic extremism in Xinjiang.
The new rules mean that it is illegal to spread religious fanaticism, for example by having "abnormal beards or unusual names".
And extremism is defined so broadly that it even seems to apply to parents who complain if their children want to marry someone of a different faith or ethnic group.
Is China rife against Islam?
China is also launching a wider campaign against Islamic practices throughout Xinjiang. He wants to put an end to the use of halal products that are not food products.
One newspaper said that the use of the term halal to describe articles such as toothpastes blurred the dividing line between religious life and secular life and made people plagued by religious extremism.
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On Monday, Communist Party leaders in the regional capital, Urumqi, urged executives to take an oath to fight the "panhalal trend," AFP reported.
The new regulations also make it clear that Muslim women are not allowed to wear headscarves.
Communist Party members and bureaucrats were invited to speak Mandarin Chinese in public and not in local languages.
How are the camps?
Former camp prisoners spoke to the BBC about physical and psychological torture on the spot. Whole families had disappeared, they said.
In July, a former teacher from one of the camps who fled to Kazakhstan told a court that "in China, we are talking about a political camp, but it is actually a prison in the mountains".
According to former detainees, the New York Times stated that they had been forced to sing songs such as "Without the Communist Party, there would be no new China" and that those did not remember these words had not had breakfast.
"In the end, all the officials had an essential point: the greatness of the Chinese Communist Party, the delay of Uyghur culture and the advanced nature of Chinese culture," former detainee Abdusalam Muhemet told the newspaper.
The Uyghur World Congress said in a report that detainees were held indefinitely without charge and forced to shout slogans of the Communist Party.
She stated that they were malnourished and that reports of torture were widespread.
Most of the detainees have never been charged with a crime and do not enjoy any legal representation.
However, the Chinese-language daily Global Times newspaper maintains that strict security measures in the region prevent it from turning into "China's Syria" or "China's Libya".
Who are the Uighurs?
Uighurs are Turkic-speaking Muslims mainly living in Xinjiang. They represent about 45% of the population there.
They see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to the countries of Central Asia and their language is similar to Turkish.
In recent decades, a large number of Han Chinese (the ethnic majority of China) have emigrated to Xinjiang, and Uyghurs feel that their culture and livelihoods are under threat.
Xinjiang is officially designated as an autonomous region within China, like Tibet to the south.
