https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-detention-camp.html?

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China is Detaining Muslims in Vast Numbers. The Goal: ‘Transformation’

By Chris Buckley

Sep. 8, 2018

In western China, hundreds of ethnic Uighars are in high-profile internment camps. The

purpose of these camps are to eradicate the ‘virus’ that is Islam and convert those who are

incarcerated to the Communist Party. Proponents of the internment camps call the process

“transformation through re-education”. Basically, in an attempt to Sinicize these ethnic Uighars

they are being imprisoned and forced to renounce their faith. One testimony of Abdusalam

Muhemet recalls that the guards would make them run around an assembly ground while they

were slapped and shoved. Later, they were made to Chinese hymns such as “​Without the

Communist Party, There Would Be No New China.” Those who didn’t know or forgot the words

were denied food.

This idea of Islam being a virus permeates deeply into this internment system, even so far

as federal documents. This article says that in many government documents, “local officials

sometimes liken inmates to patients requiring isolation and emergency intervention.” People are

put into these camps with the intentions that the ‘religious extremism’ of Islam will be eradicated

in China, thus protecting the now-ruling Communist Party. People are being thrown in for a

number of reasons, all the way down to petty offenses such as “possessing books about religion

and Uighur culture; and even for wearing a T-shirt with a Muslim crescent. Women are

sometimes detained because of transgressions by their husbands or sons.”

 This article gave interesting insight into another religion currently facing persecution in

China. Thus far, almost all of my articles have talked about Christianity and the Chinese

government’s crackdown on that institution. A few have also mentioned the crackdown on Islam

but haven’t given many details. Based solely on this article, it seems that the governmental

restrictions being put on Islam and its followers far exceed that being put on Christianity and

Christians. A question this article raises for me is why are Muslims being put into internment

camps and not people belonging to other religions? Is it because they are Uighars or because they

are Muslim? If it is the religion that the government is afraid of, why are they being more

physically abusive with these Muslims than with the Christians that have been discussed in my

previous artifacts? After reading this article, the answers to these questions remain unclear to me.