Former inmates have told of the horror after being detained in China’s indoctrination camps for Muslims, where they were physically and mentally tortured.
China’s “strike hard” campaign in remote Xinjiang is set to intensify in the month of Ramzan with one report saying monitoring of minority Muslim communities in the province had become invasive and another claiming that several thousand Muslims had been detained in “re-education camps”.
According to former inmates, Muslims in the camps are made to eat pork and drink alcohol among other punishments when they refuse to follow orders from the camp authorities. Upto a million Muslims, mainly from the Xinjiang region, are reportedly detained in such camps in China. The Uyghur Muslim population of Xinjiang is about nine million.
Chinese officials have largely avoided comment on the camps, but some are quoted in state media as saying that ideological changes are needed to fight separatism and Islamic extremism. Radical Muslim Uighurs have killed hundreds in recent years, and China considers the region a threat to peace in a country where the majority is Han Chinese.
