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The Chinese government has launched a bomb.
The far west of the country, Xinjiang, has just revised its legislation to allow local governments to detain those it believes to be influenced by religious extremism.
The revised laws effectively give the government the power to imprison people in propaganda camps for patriotic "reeducation."
The facilities sparked an international outcry, with charges of torture and the use of authoritarian force being used against the country's minority of one million Uyghur Muslims.
WHAT IS THE NEW LAW?
According to the new Article 33 of Xinjiang's regulation against extremism: "Educational transformation institutions, such as vocational training and education centers, teach common language, laws and regulations as well as than professional skills. "
"The centers should organize and carry out anti-extremist ideological education, psychological correction and behavioral correction in order to transform trainees' thinking in order to help them return to society and their families."
This is very different from the previous law, which recommended "concentrated education" and "behavioral correction" against extremism, defined as inciting hatred, discrimination and violence.
This does not imply that subjects are separated from their families, as does the new article.
The new law also suggests that the Chinese government no longer denies the brutality of the camps, recognizing a "psychological correction" and that detainees will be isolated from society and their families.
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN XINJIANG?
Xinjiang is a large autonomous region in the northwest of the country bordering the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uyghurs – a Turkic ethnic group based mainly in Xinjiang – have been subjected to arbitrary detention and torture for years.
As we speak, more than one million Muslims in northwestern China's Xinjiang region would be held in prison-like camps disguised as "re-education centers," according to local organizations. human rights advocates, US officials and survivors.
It has also been reported that Muslim detainees were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, which is forbidden in their religion.
The Chinese government has not denied the existence of these camps before, but claimed that these institutions are only re-education centers that teach Chinese language and Chinese laws on Islam and the Chinese. political activities.
An official Chinese Communist Party record has compared Islam to an "infectious disease".
The recording, obtained by Radio Free Asia, stated: "The members of the public who were chosen for the rehabilitation were contaminated by an ideological illness.
"Being infected with religious extremism and a violent terrorist ideology and not seeking treatment, it is like being infected with an illness that has not been treated in time or taking toxic drugs." … There is no guarantee that this will not trigger you and will not affect you in the future. "
Ex-detainees described disturbing indoctrination programs that lasted several months, in which they were forced to renounce their religion and pledge their allegiance to the state.
Over the past decade, the region has been transformed into a supervised state in which the population, including its movements and beliefs, is controlled by the government.
It all began in 2009, when thousands of people took to the streets for a mass demonstration in the capital of the region, Urumqi.
They were protesting the recent killing of Uyghur migrant workers in Guangdong in the south of the country.
According to media reports, buses were reportedly destroyed, stones were thrown through shop windows and passersby were assaulted. They set fire to vehicles, riot squads being mobilized to restore order with tear gas and armored vehicles.
There were 197 deaths and nearly 2,000 wounded before the restoration of order.
According to the standards of all countries, such a demonstration would be heavy, but in an authoritarian China – where demonstrations are neither allowed nor tolerated by the communist government – it was the next level and armed police were brought to contain the violence.
Communist Party officials reacted by effectively creating a state of surveillance.
In one Black mirrorAccording to this system, each resident of the region was given a "safe", "normal" or "dangerous" designation, determined by age, religion, religion, foreign contacts and travel to Canada. # 39; abroad. Those in the "unsafe" category were sent to internment camps.
According to US officials, they have installed facial recognition cameras, cell phone scanners, DNA collections and an increased intrusive police presence.
The Chinese government says that institutions are only rehab facilities that teach Chinese language and Chinese laws on Islam and political activity. But those who lived them do not agree.
MUSLIM INTERNET CAMPS OF XINJIANG
Massive detentions of Uyghurs reportedly began early last year. Citizens could simply disappear in the middle of the night or after disembarking from a flight back to the area.
Iman *, from a middle-class Uygur family, has studied in the United States and elsewhere in China.
Back in Xinjiang, he was arrested upon his arrival, despite the interrogations of his interrogators and the absence of any incriminating element.
He was then taken to a prison-like detention house, where his meticulously structured days would consist of re-education films and workshops in which he would have been taught to reinterpret Islam. The light in the bedroom, which he shared with twenty or so other men, never went out.
After 17 days of hell, the guards released him with an icy warning: "I'm sure you may have had ideological changes because of your unpleasant experience, but remember: whatever you do or say in North America, your family is always there and so are we.
But now he was part of Xinjiang's intrusive surveillance database – his "criminal" status barred him from entering shopping malls, getting on public transport and getting into public buildings.
Another detainee, a Kazakh Muslim named Bekali, had an even more difficult experience.
He added that while he refused to follow orders every day, he was forced to stand in front of a wall five hours at a time. Then he was sent to isolation and deprived of food for 24 hours in a row. After 20 days in the camp, he wanted to commit suicide.
"The psychological pressure is huge, when you have to criticize yourself, denounce your thinking – your own ethnic group," Bekali told tears at The Associated Press. "I'm still thinking about it every night, until the sun comes up. I can not sleep. Thoughts are with me all the time. "
After a tortuous interrogation program in which he was suspended by the wrists and mined for information, he was taken to a re-education camp.
He added that the detainees would get up together before dawn, sing the Chinese national anthem and raise the Chinese flag at 7:30. They gathered in large classrooms to learn "red songs", such as "Without the Communist Party, there is no new China", and to study Chinese language and history.
Before meals of vegetable soup and brioches, detainees were told to say, "Thank the party! Thank you, fatherland! Thank you President Xi! "
Bekali was in a locked room almost at any time of the day with eight other internees, who shared beds and miserable toilets. Cameras were installed in the toilets and even the outer toilets.
The detainees were forced to criticize and criticize their religion in front of one another and to apologize for wearing Islamic clothing and teaching the Qu'ran. Of course, prayer was strictly forbidden.
It is unclear how many prisoners can be held in the camps, but a report from Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 800,000 people out of the region's 22 million could be there.
Even outside the camps, all aspects of life are controlled for the residents of the minority.
According to a report by Buzzfeed News, pushing a beard or naming your child, Muhammad or Medina, can make you report to the police.
Women would be banned from wearing burqas and veils in Xinjiang. Residents are no longer allowed to fast. And as of 2016, millions of residents were forced to surrender their passports and obtain government permission to leave China.
The city is teeming with checkpoints, where authority representatives can check your phone for any trace of religious language in text messages, overseas phone calls, or banned apps on social networks such as than Facebook and Twitter.
– with wires
