China, which has faced global provocation over the coronavirus pandemic, the recent standoff with the Philippines in South China and rising tensions with Taiwan, is now making news for the dreadful treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority community at concentration camps in the Xinjiang province.
Fresh and strong evidence has come up against China which shows the surveillance, intimidation and harassment of Uyghurs. A nearly 20-minute long video shot by an activist Guan Guan shows the brutal reality of how the Xi Jinping led-government continues its atrocities on Uyghurs. The video was uploaded on YouTube in early October.
“Due to the Chinese government’s restrictions, foreign journalists can hardly gain access to Xinjiang to conduct interviews,” Guan said. At the start of the video, he said that the Chinese government has set up concentration camps in Xinjiang province where local ethnic minorities and dissidents are imprisoned without a trial, according to a report by Radio Free Asia.
During his trip to Xinjiang, Guan travelled in a total of eight cities and discovered 18 such concentration camps, according to a report by the Daily Mail. Despite many of these camps being unmarked on maps, the activist was able to film barbed wires, guard towers, military vehicles and signs and walkways inside prison walls, the report added.
In Hami in eastern Xinjiang, Guan travelled to the Hami Compulsory Isolated Drug Rehabilitation Center, which he suspects is a concentration camp. On the other hand, In Urumqi, he came across a road that had several buildings with watchtowers and high fences topped with barbed wire, the Radio Free Asia’s report also said.
For years, China has denied any wrongdoing against the Uyghur community and said that the concentration camps, which the government calls re-education camps, have been set up to fight against Islamist militancy in Xinjiang. However, several human rights groups have claimed that China has been sending Uyghurs to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious practices, sterilising women from the community etc.
This year, the United States became the first-ever country across the globe to declare China’s actions in Xinjiang as “genocide”.
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