Blog post: Targeted Marginalisation of the Uighurs in China

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/23/china-footage-reveals-hundreds-of-blindfolded-and-shackled-prisoners-uighur

Video evidence has emerged depicting hundreds of prisoners, assumed to be members of the Uyghur ethnic group, being led by guards at an unspecified location in China.

The muslim ethnic group has faced persecution in China for decades

Presently, there are allegations that hundreds of thousands of Uighurs are being kept in ‘re-education camps’ used to combat ‘religious extremism’. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners are currently detained in these camps, with 

estimates ranging from 120,000 to over 1,000,000. There have been reports of entire families dissappearing, and former prisoners have told of being subjected to intense physical and psychological torture. 

Chinese officials claimed earlier this year that the majority of detainees had been ‘returned’, however this video footage contradicts this assertion. 

In Uighur-populated villages in Xinjiang, there have been reports of extensive government surveillance that it outright totalitarian in nature: cameras have been placed in private homes in order to monitor and catch any ‘deviant’ behaviour. 

This targeted marginalisation demonstrates the authoritarian tendencies of the Communist party, and their apparent willingness to detain anyone who supposedly requires ‘re-education’. The cultural impact of the Chinese authoritarian government has been overwhelmingly negative for this Muslim-Turkic minority.