The Chinese government have long considered the Muslim population in Xinjiang a threat to society and have treated them with extreme hostility and violence. Since 2014, Uighurs have been forced to live with severe surveillance and restrictions, which the Chinese government states is to keep track of any ‘religious extremism’. This includes the obvious signs of reading extremist websites and sharing radical information. The government have also included the more arbitrary signs of owning a prayer mat, growing a beard, abruptly quitting drinking or smoking or even storing large amounts of food at home.

“There are so many cameras. An hour commute takes half a day because of all the checks and inspections. They check your ID, they do iris checks and body checks”, says a Muslim woman in a Human Rights Watch video. In fact, new reports and interviews have revealed the Chinese government have established a system of advanced facial recognition technology to track and control the movement, activities and behaviour of the Muslim minority.

Identity stripped

The Chinese government wants a homogenous nation, everybody must follow the same principles, the same ideology. Otherwise, it is considered political disloyalty and dissent. The Uighurs’ language is related to Turkish, and Islam is an extremely prominent part of their culture and identity meaning that they dress and present themselves differently to the majority of the Chinese population, which is unnerving for the authorities. The view that differences in a population leads to lack of stability in controlling them fuels the animosity towards the Uighurs.

The violence against the Uighur population has only increased over the past six years. Despite denying the very existence of concentration camps for years, Chinese officials later described the detention camps as ‘vocational education and training centres’, which ABC News reports as places “where would-be terrorists were to be reformed and turned into productive members of society.”

These ‘re-education centres’, however, which holds Muslims without trial, involve the brainwashing of Muslims and stripping them of their cultural and personal identity. They are often made to do forced labour, forced to learn Mandarin Chinese, to convert to atheism and to learn the national anthem. They have to give up their religious rituals including fasting for Ramadan, praying and even abstaining from eating pork and drinking alcohol. If they restrain or they refuse to do as they’re told, they are tortured through extreme means including sterilisation, poisoning, rape, beatings, electric chairs, and organ harvesting.

 Condemnation reluctance 

The UK, among many other countries, including China, are parties to the Genocide Convention, which, according to the UN, “signified the international community’s commitment to ‘never again’ after the atrocities committed during the Second World War” (the Holocaust). Yet China is blatantly breaking the rules of the human rights treaty they signed and ratified, and other countries remain silent.

Governments around the world may be slow to act because of several factors. One of them being that China is a powerful and often reckless country so other governments act with caution. China could quite easily block the UN from meddling in their atrocities. A lot of countries also have pretty solid trade deals with China, and are reluctant to rock the relationship. More culturally, however, there is the case of western Islamophobia and lack of information from Xinjiang (due to restricted access to foreign journalists and the promotion of propaganda) both within governments and people.

While countries including Germany and Australia have spoken out condemning China’s actions, taking action to put a stop to the genocide has not followed. Europe promised ‘never again’ but they are arguably not keeping that promise.