In November last year, a data leak revealed China’s ‘brainwashing’ intentions to coerce Uighurs within prison camps, with huge populations of Muslims being interred inside a network of institutions. These camps hold one million people from the Muslim Uighur community: or at least this was the estimate in 2019.
Inside, detainees are awarded ‘praise’ points for their ‘ideological transformation, study and training’. This determines whether inmates are allowed contact with family and when they are released. Under this mass psychological disordering scheme, inmates are only released once four Chinese Communist Party officials have seen evidence they have been ‘transformed’ and ‘corrected’ .
The Chinese government avidly dismissed these camps as ‘voluntary education’ and training. We now know better: denial of faith, stripping of human rights, violation of belief systems, torture. And yet the claim still stands: ‘voluntary’.
Documents discovered by BBC Panorama revealed that inmates are locked up, indoctrinated and punished, with strict regimes to keep ‘students’ trapped in the system implementing ‘behavioural norms and discipline requirements for getting up, roll call, washing, going to the toilet, organising and housekeeping, eating, studying, sleeping, closing the door: Ensuring that the camp ‘increases discipline and punishment’ – just a few rules taken from high security documents.
Now, there is even more evidence of this xenophobic human rights violation. Last week US customs seized 13 tonnes of human hair, believed to have been shaven from prisoners in these camps. This is the second time such orders have been detained, but only the first time it has been made into the mainstream media. The US is suspicious of these human rights violations, yet continues to support slavery by importing shipments.
Many of the sources of this human hair are Uighurs, believed by the Chinese to be harbouring separatist tendencies because of their distinct culture, language and religion. China’s ‘civilised state’ mentality has led to a complete refusal to abandon its authoritarian policies, giving ultimate power to its ruling class and allowing a totalitarian regime with one “ruler race”. Following the open-door policy to allow neo-liberal economic boom, China has opened the world up to a spike in human product trafficking that as importers and consumers we are supporting.
Check the source of your goods. Encourage your governments to not just adapt against suspected human rights violations but to mitigate it completely. Do not support slavery.
Lilly
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