There are concentration camps that China doesn’t want you to know about
Have you ever heard about the concentration camps of China? If you haven’t heard about it, please continue reading so that you can educate yourself on such an unknown matter.
As I just said, this topic is not really known, the media doesn’t talk about it, yet it is real, and actual, and can cost a lot of damage. Nowadays, there are 380 concentration camps and 14 in construction in China, and yes, China is aware of it.
Let me introduce you to this subject really quick. One year ago, on Reddit, someone posted an affirmation which assured that there were concentration camps in China that kept more than three million people inside without consent, that no one was talking about and it created a debate on social media. Not everyone believed that this was true due to the lack of information, since there was only an affirmation from someone that may not be trust worthy, with a photo that didn’t really give any type of information whatsoever.
So, do these camps really exist?
In fact, they do. According to a BBC investigation, on July 12, 2015, a satellite captured an image showing an empty, ash-gray area of sand. A place that probably no one would want to inhabit or even visit, an hour’s drive from the small town of Dabancheng. But, almost three years later, on April 22, 2018, the satellite image showed something new. Where before there was only desert, now there was a huge complex surrounded by a 2 km wall and with 16 watchtowers.
They wanted to approach this complex, but when they reached Dabancheng, about five cars with police and government officials were following them. Before being forced to stop and turn off the cameras, they were able to observe from the road as the complex had grown even larger, like a mini-city growing out of the desert. Citizens of the region affirmed that it was a “re-education center” where they locked up those with ideas contrary to the government and where they were forced to renounce their religious beliefs, admitting that God does not exist, only the Communist Party.
Who is being captured in these camps, and why?
Some years ago the Chinese government started a crusade against Islam. According to an investigation carried out by The Guardian newspaper, since 2016, at least 24 mosques have been destroyed in the Xinjiang region of northern China. About a million Muslims have been or are locked up in these concentration camps, officially called “Vocational Education and Training Centers,” according to a UN estimate, which of course has been denied by Beijing.
Despite the fact that Islam barely accounts for 1% in the country, in Xinjuang it is the predominant religion. Mainly Uyghurs and Kazakhs live in this region, and both ethnic groups profess Islam. In addition, more than 9 million people have a strong sense of independence from what they call “cultural preponderance imposed by the Communist Party of China.”
For this reason, the government has banned the practice of Islam and has introduced facial recognition technologies to monitor citizens. Those who have been held in concentration camps were not even prosecuted or charged at all. The reason that the Chinese government offers for the existence of these camps is that they seek to mitigate religious extremism and separatism in the population to avoid terrorist attacks.
What has been done by other governments?
The Chinese Government obviously says that these accusations are far from the reality of the actions, but still, in july of 2019, 22 countries decided to sign a joint letter to the UN Human Rights Council urging China to close the camps in Xinjiang. Reacting to this, 37 other countries have signed a joint letter to praise UNHCR China’s “remarkable achievements in Xinjiang”, and later on, China declared that other 13 countries also signed it.
These are the countries that were against China: Australia, Austria, Belguim, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
These are the countries that supported China: Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Gabon, Kuwait, Laos, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela
and Zimbabwe.
It is hard to know about this topic, since it is really hidden. Even in Wikipedia, instead of the title being “The concentration camps in Xinjiang” it’s “Xinjiang re-education camps”, so if you didn’t know about this matter, it’s normal.
https://miro.medium.com/max/335/1*1TpJyz10Eg8OWvVMFZN33w.jpeg
