Die Endlösung der Uigurischfrage

China takes Muslim children from their families

By Christy Choi in Hong Kong

A crowd of locals confronting security forces in Urumqi in 2009. 

China is separating Muslim children from their families, religion and language, and is engaged in a rapid, large-scale campaign to build "boarding schools" for them.
The attempts to “remove children from their roots” exists in parallel to Beijing’s ongoing detention of an estimated 1 million Uighur adults from the East Turkestan colony in concentration camps and sweeping crackdown on the rights of the minority group, the BBC reported.
“I don’t know who is looking after them,” one mother told the BBC, pointing to a picture of her three young daughters. 

“There is no contact at all.”
The BBC says its investigation is based on publicly available documents, and backed up by dozens of interviews with family members living overseas. 

In 60 separate interviews, parents and other relatives gave details of the disappearance of more than 100 children in East Turkestan, all of them Uighurs – members of the region’s largest and mostly Muslim ethnic group.
“I heard that they’ve been taken to an orphanage,” another woman said, holding a photograph of her four children.

In one township alone, more than 400 children have lost one or more parents to either the camps or prison, it reports.
A Chinese state media outlet called overseas reports on China’s mass detainment of Uighur Muslims in concentration camps “fake news” and published detailed denials of eight “rumours”, on the 10th anniversary of the Urumqi riots, in which at least 140 people were killed and 828 injured. 

Many Uighurs say the riots precipitated the increasing oppression of Muslims in the region.

The denials contradict well-documented evidence from media outlets and researchers. 

China initially denied the existence of the concentration camps in East Turkestan, which is home to about 12 million Muslims. 

But last year, it began rebranding them as “free vocational training”, claiming those detained within them are "taught language, culture and vocational skills".
The Chinese narrativ denies Uighurs are being targeted and mistreated, that the state is looking to wipe out their history and culture, and that they were sent to “vocational training centres” for being Muslim.
It also denies there were a million people being held at these centres, says the camps were there for “counter-terrorism and deradicalisation efforts”, and the centres existed to “nip terrorist activities in the bud”.

'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

An earlier BBC report showed a teacher describing inmates as “affected by religious extremism”, and saying that the purpose of the camps was “to get rid of their extremist thoughts”.
The prominent Uighur author Nurmuhammad Tohti, 70, died after being held in one of the re-education camps.
His granddaughter said he had been denied treatment for diabetes and heart disease, and was released only once his medical condition meant he had become incapacitated.
China has in recent weeks invited media outlets to view these camps, but has tightly controlled their access to the facilities and detainees.

Uighur author Nurmuhammad Tohti dies in Chinese concentration camp

By Alison Flood

Nurmuhammad Tohti, pictured in Urumqi, the capital of East Turkestan.

The death of the prominent Uighur writer Nurmuhammad Tohti after being held in one of East Turkestan’s concentration camps has been condemned as a tragic loss by human rights organisations.
Radio Free Asia reported that Tohti, who was 70, had been detained in one of the concentration camps from November 2018 to March 2019. 

His granddaughter, Zorigul, who is based in Canada, said he had been denied treatment for diabetes and heart disease, and was only released once his medical condition meant he had become incapacitated. 

She wrote on a Facebook page for the Uighur exile community that she had only learned of his death 11 days after it happened because her family in East Turkestan had been frightened that making the information public would make them a target for detention.
Another granddaughter, Berna Ilchi, told Voice of America that she did not know if Tohti had died inside the camp or at home because her family feared their phone was tapped. 

“The truth is that they put a 70-year old man with diabetes and heart disease inside a concentration camp and they cannot deny this,” she said.
Tohti’s grandson Babur Ilchi confirmed on his Instagram account – now deleted – that his grandmother had told him the news, reported Radio Free Asia. 

“Shortly after the call, my grandma received a message from the Chinese government saying she had answered a foreign call and that that was a dangerous decision. What did she do other than tell us he had passed away? Why should that be met with consequences?” he wrote.
“He was a respected writer; no affiliation with terrorism, which is what the Chinese government claims these concentration camps are fighting against. He deserved better, and so do the MILLIONS of Uighurs who are suffering in these camps.”

China initially denied the existence of the camps in the far western colony of East Turkestan, which is home to about 12 million Muslims. 

But last year, it began rebranding them as “free vocational training”; a BBC report on Tuesday showed a teacher describing inmates as “affected by religious extremism”, and saying that the purpose of the camps was “to get rid of their extremist thoughts”. 

It is estimated that a million Uighurs and other Muslims are currently detained.
PEN America’s director of free expression programmes, Summer Lopez, said: “The inhumane treatment reported at the internment camps is a grave illustration of the severity of China’s violations of free expression. Tohti’s death is a tragic loss to the Uighur literary community, at a time when the government is attempting to abolish their cultural and intellectual life.”