The Life of an Uighur Muslim

The Uighur Muslims are a Turkic ethnic group indigenous to the Xinjiang region of the

People’s Republic of China. They are one of the 55 ethnic minorities recognized by

China. As we know, every person has the right to be part of their own ethnic group and

must be respected and treated equally. However, since 2017, Uighur Muslims have been

forced to work in labor camps.

More than 80,000 Muslims were displaced from the Xinjiang autonomous region to

work for factories across China. The Chinese government argued that they were

providing jobs to these people and helping alleviate poverty. Reports stated that it was

“extremely difficult” for Uighur Muslims to escape the jobs they were provided. They

were always threatened with being sent to detention camps.

In November 2019, certain documents from the Chinese Communist Party were leaked,

showing the planning behind mass detention camps for Uighur Muslims. It provided

proof that more than 82 foreign companies were employing these people at a bare

minimum to no wage while threatening them with detention camps if they didn't finish

the work provided to them. Some of the factories belong to famous international brands

such as Nike, Dell, and Apple.

Gulbahar Haitiwaji, who is an Uighur Muslim herself, had an interview taken in France. When she was called back to China, she was sent to a “re-education camp”. She talks about the appalling conditions inside the detention camp she was present inside of. In one of her books, “Survivor of the Chinese Gulag” she mentions how the Chinese government wants to “wipe out their culture and eradicate the uighur muslims themselves”.

When she was called back to China from her previous employer in 2016, with the subject of

“documentation for early retirement”, she did not know that she would lose her family and her basic rights for 3 years. As soon as she landed in the Xinjiang region, the police arrested her immediately and sent her to a “re-education camp”. They falsely made accusations claiming that she was a mother of a terrorist from Turkmenistan. This could not have possibly been true given the fact that she spent the last 15 years of her life in Paris. They took away her passport so that she could not leave the country. When she requested for her passport, she was sent to prison again.

While in prison, Gulbahar had to go through terrible conditions. She was shackled to her bed with very thin clothing and temperatures dropping to about minus 30 degrees at night. The prison guards could not provide a proper reason to why she was shackled to her bed. She was later transferred to a forced labor camp which was apparently considered a “favor” according to the soldiers that were handling her transfer work. While detained, she was forced to learn chinese, culture, law and language. This was an attempt to ‘brainwash’ the uighur muslims and to eventually eradicate them.

Human rights groups believe that the Chinese government has detained over a million

Uighur Muslims in the past few years. They have been forced to work in so-called

“re-education camps” set up by the Chinese government. The Chinese government

denies all these conspicuous human rights violation allegations and states that they

brought peace as a result of anti-terrorism efforts in the Xinjiang Region. The image

provided below shows the rapid increase in the size and population of the Chinese

“re-education camp” location in Xinjiang. The People’s Republic of China must act upon

these human rights violations and save the Uighur Muslims. By Atharva Puri