There has recently been increasingly widespread reports of oppression of the native Uyghur peoples in the Northwest, remote and autonomous region of Xinjiang. The autonomous regions of China are regulated by their own local government. Majority of the Uyghur are muslim and are ethnically and religiously a minority group in China. Xinjiang is so far from the mainland that it is often referred to "east Turkistan".

In an attempt to combat Islamic Terrorism, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is undergoing a massive campaign to detain and this ethnic and religious minority. The actions of the CCP have been underway since early 2017 and have been attempted to remain a secret, only hitting mainstream Western news this past week. However, discrimination and persecution of this Muslim minority has been ongoing for years.   Essentially they are forming internment camps which involve "religious and political reeducation" as well as torture and interrogation. An estimated 120,000 of the Uyghur population are being held in these "containment camps". The camps are being compared to the "re-education camps" of the Mao era. For those who don't know the Mao era was a period of extreme socialism leading to the rise of the CCP, this era is viewed as the darkest period in contemporary Chinese History.

There have also been reports of forced marriages between women who are ethnically Uyghur and Han Chinese (the ethnic majority). The forced weddings can be viewed as government "assisted" assimilation and "gene washing". There have also been reports of disappearances of both Uyghur men and women. Many of the Chinese Uyghur citizens have travelled back and forth to Kazakhstan, the reports of disappearances has led Kazakhstan to confront China about mission Uyghur-Kazack nationals, Kazakh media outlets and officials have been cautious in reporting on the persecution of Muslim minorities in China as China is an extremely powerful and wealthy neighbour in contrast to Kazakhstan.

 

The government enforced oppression of the Uyghur people is of course extremely problematic, immoral and not unlike the containment camps enforced on the Asian-American population in the 1940s or the Jewish internment camps in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Xinjiang is being referred to as a "police state".  There has been no news of intervention by the Chinese government or any other foreign government, thanks to social media this situation has quickly gained global attention and will hopefully lead to some sort of intervention by perhaps a foreign government or the U.N.

By Daman Grewal.