THE PERSECUTION OF UYGHURS IN EAST TURKISTAN — EXTRAJUDICIAL/EXTRALEGAL MASS INTERNMENT CAMPS
The Chinese regime, with the aim of upholding total control and achieving unquestioning submission in East Turkistan, has been actively executing its coercive ethnocentric sinicization policies to erase Uyghurs’ Turkic identity (i.e. language, culture, and the belief system). These specifically targeted assimilation policies have had an enormous impact on the social interactions and the collective psyche of the Uyghur people both at home and abroad, which in recent years also started to impact the lives of other Turkic/Muslim peoples in East Turkistan.
The annual report is aimed to serve the information needs of the growing community of organizations, UN and government official, and other concerned individuals who are devoted to seeking accountability for human rights violations against the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan.
Present Results:
- China refers to its internment camps in East Turkistan as “re-education” centers, but based on the known educational background info for 1/3 of our entire sample, more than 300 internees have a university degree, which speaks volumes to the falsehood of the regime’s internment campaign.
- The average age of the internees in our dataset is 39, which demonstrates that the majority of them would not normally be enrolled in such “job training” programs. The release rate of the internees is at a markedly low 4.6%.
- The Chinese regime also targets Uyghur religiosity in its internment campaign, but base on the known religiosity data point, 54 internees were registered as non-religious or not practicing, suggesting that the target population also includes those whose religious thoughts do not have to be “re-educated”.
- Another aspect of the whole “re-education” campaign has been that of learning Mandarin Chinese, based on the known Mandarin proficiency data point for 545 internees in our dataset, 168 of whom have high proficiency in Mandarin, which also contradicts to one main intent of the regime’s “re-education” drive.
- Moreover, our dataset is also consistent with the broadly known fact: interning mostly men in the households. Predicated upon our dataset, we can safely say that the Chinese regime’s internment campaign does not favor one Uyghur demographic over another with respect to educational background and Mandarin proficiency, i.e. no Uyghur is safe from the regime’s mass internment drive.
The annual report concludes that the Chinese regime has engaged in severe human rights violations (crimes against humanity) that meet the criteria for genocide as defined by the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The role of the collective and national consciousness, “which by its very nature, tends to emerge and re-emerge, however often and however harshly it is suppressed, in all peoples whose national identity is threatened by a ruling power”
Read the Annual Report