By ELI LEE
Web Editor
There sits an area in northwestern China called the Xinjiang region. Currently underway in this region may be one of the most horrific and disgusting transgression of events the modern world has seen carried out by a leading power and nation.
As I write this article millions of people are being detained in “re-education” camps against their will. These people all share one commonality, they’re part of different Muslim groups. The large majority of them are from the Uighur group. In China, the Uighurs are an ethnic minority, more specifically a Muslim minority.
The Chinese government is justifying these camps by saying the detainees are deceived by religious extremism, basically saying that they are all terrorists. Reports from the United Nations and other credible sources say this information is false, that these people are in fact not dangerous at all. This is all according to multiple trustworthy news networks including The New York Times, WSJ, Huffpost, and more.
China has increasingly cracked down on people who practice Islam, fortifying their police state to higher bounds with advance technology. This creates an environment where there’s basically no freedom to practice what you believe in, and they’re especially cracking down on Islam practices.
They want to erase the culture and identity of these people, they don’t want to fuse them with their nation or let them keep the traditions they hold, they simply want to assimilate them fully into Chinese culture. Assimilated people are easier to control.
These aren’t humane camps whatsoever. They aren’t “re-education camps” they’re modern concentration camps. What we are witnessing is the start of something that has happened before, something very horrible. Yet you don’t see it on mainstream news networks everyday. It’s not breaking news, people don’t even know these camps exist.
Most of my peers didn’t even know they existed until I told them about it, in fact it’s not even being discussed in my political science classes, classes that this is relevant to. The world is blind to what’s happening in China. That’s not a good thing at all, its horrifying.
These camps have reported horrible conditions. These include torture, food and sleep deprivation, and brainwashing through the playing of propaganda and other videos. These are all things the U.S. and rest of the world knows about. There are multiple sources and even images of the camps to prove it.
Why aren’t we as a nation doing something about this? What’s the point in possessing the biggest military in the world if we can’t even stop people from running internment camps? Its disgusting that the Chinese government continues to get away with this.
Nations around the world should be sanctioning them, they should be pushing to let people investigate and see what actually happens at these camps. If there’s nothing to hide then journalists and officials from around the world should be let in to investigate, and should have been already.
This is a human rights issue, and a huge one at that. These camps aren’t just going to stop. What happens when the method they’re using doesnt work? When the people of these ethnic groups refuse to assimilate? Something people don’t want to acknowledge, something they didn’t in the past either.
This may be the start of another stain in the history of our people. A huge, disgusting, and horrific stain. It’s something that can be prevented, if actions are taken as soon as possible. People need to get up, we as a nation need to acknowledge and address what’s going on in China. It should happen now, and it should of happened a while ago.
