Al Jazeera News :
China has issued an ardent defence of its alleged mass internment of Uighur minorities in far west Xinjiang region amid a global outcry, with a regional official insisting that authorities are preventing “terrorism” through “vocational education” centres. Up to one million ethnic Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic minorities are believed to be held in such centres, according to estimates cited by a United Nations panel.
Former inmates have said they found themselves incarcerated for transgressions such as wearing long beards and face veils or sharing Islamic holiday
greetings on social media, a process that echoes the decades of brutal thought reform under Mao Zedong.
The programme has come under increasingly heavy fire from the international community, with particularly heavy censure from the United States and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Has China detained a million Uighur Muslims?
Chinese authorities initially denied the existence of the facilities. But they have changed their tune as satellite imagery and documents issued by their own government have made it increasingly difficult to maintain that position. In recent weeks the story has shifted from outright dismissal to acknowledgement that the camps exist.
In a rare interview with China’s official Xinhua news service published on Tuesday, the chairman of Xinjiang’s government, Shohrat Zakir, defended the use of the centres, saying that the region was now “safe and stable”.
China has issued an ardent defence of its alleged mass internment of Uighur minorities in far west Xinjiang region amid a global outcry, with a regional official insisting that authorities are preventing “terrorism” through “vocational education” centres. Up to one million ethnic Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic minorities are believed to be held in such centres, according to estimates cited by a United Nations panel.
Former inmates have said they found themselves incarcerated for transgressions such as wearing long beards and face veils or sharing Islamic holiday
greetings on social media, a process that echoes the decades of brutal thought reform under Mao Zedong.
The programme has come under increasingly heavy fire from the international community, with particularly heavy censure from the United States and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Has China detained a million Uighur Muslims?
Chinese authorities initially denied the existence of the facilities. But they have changed their tune as satellite imagery and documents issued by their own government have made it increasingly difficult to maintain that position. In recent weeks the story has shifted from outright dismissal to acknowledgement that the camps exist.
In a rare interview with China’s official Xinhua news service published on Tuesday, the chairman of Xinjiang’s government, Shohrat Zakir, defended the use of the centres, saying that the region was now “safe and stable”.
