The barren land of what would later be the grounds for internment camps for many Uighur Muslims caught the attention of BBC journalists and reporters in July 2015. Later, April 2018, images would show that the once vast and empty grounds of Dabancheng, Xinjiang are covered with four-story buildings and are heavily secured with fences, like those of the concentration camps, in which these Uighur Muslims are placed and forced to perform acts that are prohibited in the Islamic faith. It is later revealed that this is being done in order cure the “Islamic illness” and “help” them repent and turn to Christianity.

The “ethnic-cleansing” and disapproval of Muslims within China became increasingly prevalent in 2015 when the Chinese government restricted Uighur Muslim students, teachers and all servants of Xinjiang from observing the month of Ramadan, a month considered to be one of the holiest for all Muslims. This saw the start of routine state vetting of Uighur Imam’s (Islamic leaders) and the close surveillance of mosques.

What goes on beyond the walls of these concentration camps may be a watered-down version due to the government brain-washing not only the Muslim youth, but the rest of the Chinese population. Many citizens are led to believe that the practicing of the Islamic faith is a “mental illness” that needs to be put to a stop -children being the youngest targets- they are asked to report their parent’s “spiritual” behaviour to their teachers. The governments tactics to wipe out the Muslim population reaches far beyond the vulnerable minds of children, as many adults have become silent about the situation.

Many reporters who visited Xinjiang with the intention of finding out the truth about what is happening were often followed. The intensely, high-levelled security forced journalist, John Sudworth, to phone random residents to find out more about, what is known as the “vocational training centre”, one of which said: “There are tens of thousands of people [at the re-educational school]…They have some problems with their thoughts.”

The world has been quiet about the atrocities that are, to this day, occurring in China, with many still unaware of the Holocaust-like conditions that over 1 million Uighur Muslims are facing. Muslims, a minority in China, taking up just over 1% of the entire population, are being made to eat pork and drink alcohol, acts which are considered a sin in the Islamic faith. These Muslim women are also being fed off to non-Muslim (Han) men in a drastic attempt to dilute the Uighur-Muslim population. The Chinese government has now, gone to the extremes measures of striping Muslims of their true identity by putting a ban on growing long beards, wearing headscarves, the religious instruction of children, and even Islamic-sounding names.