In Xinjiang, China, at least 1.5 million Uighurs have been detained in more than 85 internment camps since 2017. The Chinese government is orchestrating a "cleansing" of the Muslim minority. The government denied the camps' existence before released satellite images of camp construction prompted them to acknowledge "re-education facilities."
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The Uighurs have revealed they are detained and questioned before being tortured for being Muslim. Many family members have been "lost" for the last few years, disappearing from homes and jobs. Their "crimes" are wearing the hijab, keeping a beard, and fasting. Holy books are burned in an attempt to erase Islam and women are sterilized to prevent reproduction.
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Uighurs are arrested as "terrorists" before they are taken to camps for punishment. Women are gang raped, tortured, and face humiliation before getting locked up in dark rooms. They are forced to write out praises to the Chinese government and later are periodically required to take injections that sterilize them, while pregnant women face forceful abortions.
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Uighur Muslims are being exploited to produce products for international sale. Currently 83 worldwide companies are benefiting from Uighur Muslim labor. These include popular brands like Zara, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, and H&M.
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Uighur Muslims are being forced to violate their religious and cultural restrictions by smoking, drinking, and eating pig. Chinese men are sent to women in the middle of the night to impregnate them as a way to encourage the disappearance of Uighur existence. Veils, Muslim names, and the Uighur language are all forbidden and punishable with torture.
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The Uighur Muslim genocide and the properties of erasure that it is founded on is not new. Leaders have continuously fueled their power with ethnic "cleansing." To name a few, the Jewish Holocaust of 1941-5, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, and the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 are all incredibly similar events that we as a society have promised to prevent the repetition of.
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My name is Mim Parvin and I believe we as a society need to do so much more to stop this genocide. The issue goes beyond protecting tortured women, children and men and beyond Islamophobia. It represents the individual histories of each person who has been targeted by race supremacy—including the Native Americans who dealt with assimilation, and the African nation, which was stripped to its core by white imperialists. The Uighur Muslim story is a story of the oppressed people.
