China: The Uighur Tragedy

China’s repression of the Uighur population and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang is akin to genocide: more than a million people are being arbitrarily detained in camps where they undergo torture, re-education, forced labour and are banned from speaking their own language. Children are also being re-educated in so-called “orphanages” while women are subjected to forced sterilization. Uighur culture is being systematically destroyed. 

Under the pretext of fighting Islamic radicalism and poverty, the Chinese Communist Party secretly built 1,400 internment camps and set about eradicating Uighur culture and its entire intelligentsia. It took many years for the international community to start to take notice, but Beijing persists in disguising the reality, claiming to be simply offering the Uighur population vocational training to combat poverty. 

What are the real reasons behind this relentless repression? How does the past shed light on the present situation? We examine the forces at play and reveal the stakes behind this crime against humanity.