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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
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
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
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.