China’s Detention Camps for Muslims Turn to Forced Labor

The US has a disgraceful record with respect to the Uighurs. After 9/11, we backed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tyrants, declaring the Uighur freedom fighters a terrorist organization. Imagine. The CCP does not even apologize for its killing of 40 million or more people during its fascistic rule over the Chinese. Against such thugs and a regime redolent of Stalinism or Nazism, Uighurs were trying to maintain their culture, a pale freedom, and their physical survival. Against, of course, a bespoke-suited "friendly fascism". Between this blessing and curse, we chose the curse. Now, we have an opportunity to atone for our disgusting behavior. Enough cheap tears over Xinjiang. It's time for the US to put up or shut up. We say "Never Again!" about genocide. Yet we do nothing about the soul-murdering genocidal effort to turn a Turkic people into functional Han (Chinese). Indeed we have a record of helping the genocide. We proclaim our guilt and sorrow over our near-extermination of Native Americans. And yet, we have done nothing about this identical campaign to clear away an ancient people for the settlement of a conqueror's race. The CCP sneers at objections to its assault. Let them sneer at something serious. Boycott them. For real. As we did the milder Afrikaner regime in South Africa. Is it too much pain for us, since Liberals and Conservatives, both, handed over Midwest production to low-wage non-union China? What kind of people are we?

《SinoAmerican Context》 Since its founding ~240 years ago, the US has progressed from mostly wealthy, white, slave-owning, land-owning, heterosexual, males having human rights, to an expectation that these human rights be guaranteed to all of its citizens and people living beyond its borders. On a global scale, it has mostly helped usher in the Scientific Revolution and Age of Enlightenment through its soft-power, opposed to hard-power, raising billions out of poverty through technological innovation and spreading democracy on a scale never seen before in human history. China, in contrast, in its ~70 year history as a modern state, is not any more or less unique or innovative than other developed East Asian democracies that have benefited from the US-led liberal international order. It is currently following the same trajectory Taiwan, Japan, and S. Korea did as they transitioned from an authoritarian agricultural to a democratic cognitive-labor based economy. The only thing particularly unique about it at this point is its nominal influence due to its sheer size. When China finally frees itself from the shackles of the CCP it will have a accomplished sometimes to celebrate. It can brag that once human rights only applied to a few select CCP members, but now there is an expectation that all Chinese citizens have them. However, if its aberrational legacy is a population of well-nourished CCP consumer cattle, may the universe have mercy on humanity’s existence.

We're next...they kidnapped 2 innocent Canadians for arresting theirs pursuant to a LEGAL extradition arrest warrant It would be dumb to sign a free-trade deal with them. They don't understand what rules are. Every time they don't get their way, they'll pick an American (or Canadian) up off the street to be held hostage

What I find fascinating are the authors', most of the media's and much of the readership's real or pretended ignorance of the fact that the way this minority is being 'no human/legal rights' treated, thrown into gulags and forced labor camps is quite like how all Chinese are treated now, have been abused since the Communists took over, and before that under the feudal slave/serf system that oppressed China for many hundreds of years. The question I then find myself asking is why are our holier than thou "moral authorities" at the NY Times so agitated, so outraged about this denial of rights to a scant million? While they conveniently "forgot" the murder of many 10's of millions by Mao, the Nazi like invasion and brutal subjugation of Tibet, and have soft-pedaled the global organized crime poacher destruction of forests and natural resources by the Chinese police state around the world while they cheered on the 'open borders' sending of trillions to police state China for decades ? Is it really as base and self serving as - that the NY Times editors think its OK to murder and deny basic human rights to a "majority" of 1.5 billion Chinese, or for example to deny the white Christian American majority the right to choose how many and what immigrants flood into our nation? But its not OK to deny the same human rights to some few % sacred victim minority like the one that the NY Times owners and most of its stable of grievance hunting writers and commentators happen to belong to?

What about Christians? This is happening to them as well.

You must admit, China does not bow to outside or political pressure....unlike us. They deal with issues the way they see fit. Good, bad or indifferent. Gotta respect that....

Where are all the Muslim countries who do business with China? Why aren’t they boycotting China? Raising alarms at the Arab League? The UN? Where is Pakistan, with all their pious sharia laws and protests against insulting Muhammad? Pakistan loves doing business China? All hypocrites. Every American or European country that has factories or buys from China should be moving to India, or Africa or other regions where work is needed. China needs to learn its lesson when it comes respecting human rights as commonly understood. Not the “human rights” that the Chinese communist Party promotes as propaganda as if they actually care about people. The only thing the Chinese communist party and its members care about is the party’s survival, at whatever cost to the people of the region. Good riddance to China. Richard Nixon’s Sunshine policies failed on a grand scale and now we reap what we sow, a China beholden to nothing, treating people like the cattle that communists see them as. Not individuals, each worthy of respect.

The Muslims in the Gulf countries import laborers from SE Asia and treat them as sub-humans. Thousands have died constructing facilities for the upcoming World Cup to be held in Qatar. Like such a small country needs a dozen soccer stadiums that will be abandoned afterwards. And they moved the dates to avoid the scorching heat had it been held in August like it's always been done. One wrong doesn't make a right, but karma is an Asian concept. The real interesting thing- how will many Muslim countries that lack oil and gas respond to the Chinese efforts to dominate by pouring billions and billions, trillions really, into infrastructure projects? My guess is they'll shrug and take the money. After all, it's not the Israelis doing this. The Palestinians only wish this was their PR.

If there are crematoria and mass graves attached to those facilities, only the National Reconnaissance Office and the Chinese can say.

Please stop using images supplied by the Chinese State. They are disgusting Potemkin-coatings of a violent, inhumane reality. We are not amused.

"Slavery by any other name..."

Actually, we don't really know what is going on in Xinjiang and are basically only getting one side of the story -- the anti-Chinese Communist version. The Chinese have openly stated they are building a new kind of civilization different from the capitalist West and one based on Marxism with a heavy dose of traditional Chinese cultural values originating in Confucianism and one in which a collective consciousness is valued over the Western concepts of egotism and individualism and one not based on values due to religious beliefs which are seen as backwards and divisive. This new civilization, which seems progressive and valuable to the Chinese, appears threatening and distasteful to people in the West who have been conditioned to a different set of values, and especially distasteful to many Americans who think the values of our racially unjust, poverty infected and war addicted society reflect some sort of model that others should find attractive. With one of the largest prison populations in the world parts of which are used for slave labor under the guise of "rehabilitation," the negative comments of Americans addressed to the Chinese will likely fall on deaf ears.

So, they put people in prison because of their religion, or because they criticize the government, and then turn them into slave labor. Why are trading with China again? I can understand why Saudi Arabia’s oil is a strategic resource, but how much do we need $5 t-shirts? Trade agreements with most countries rely on honest reporting from their authorities, a relatively impartial judicial system, and on journalists’ work to unearth that kind of thing. The Party in China controls official reporting (there is no independent statistical agency), the judicial system (you can’t just inquire about illegal state aid), and journalists caught reporting get jailed, and potentially tortured into confessions. How could we ever know they play a fair game? You can see it like that: as far as we know, fentanyl production and shipping to the US and other countries could very well be state-sanctioned and encouraged. Just like the theft of intellectual property, piracy, and sabotage of foreign competitors, in China or abroad. China is not an ally. As a totalitarian and nationalist country, how could it ever be so?

Look what China did in Tibet. China's Belt and Road initiative is very troubling as well. It's also hard not to buy "made in China" because so many products are made there. Trump says buy American. All well and good, but how? Follow the money. It's cheaper to make it in China when you can force people to work for pennies or nothing at all.

I smell McKinsey on the way....time to collect more big money fees and 'sanitize' this. What a despicable company they've become.

Thank you, Chris Buckley for continuing to report about the internment of Uyghurs in Kashgar. As China engages in the world market, it must conform to a standard of labor equal to the rest of the world. That means no more spying, internment, and cultural genocide.

If the Chinese communist party is capable of doing this to their own minority’s, they won’t think twice about doing it to us free thinking nytimes readers when they achieve their stated mission of global dominance. I love my new iPhone but wish it was made in USA. Paying more for my beloved iPhone not to support the ccp would be well worth it.

Sloganeering phrases such as “Re-education through labor” and "Transformation through education" smack of the most hideous examples of Orwellian doublespeak. It doesn't matter if the totalitarianism comes from the right or the left, it is equally targeted at crushing the human spirit to serve the dark needs of an overweening bureaucracy seeking total control. For the practical consequences of such control to be pursued under the banner of Communism is particularly hypocritical, given that Marxist ideology ostensibly aims for the highest liberated standard of living for all of the laboring classes. Aldous Huxley had it right. The dominant point of political ambition is control. All the high-sounding ideological fluff is nothing but meaningless window dressing.

Re-education camps are an abomination. The article, however, fails to describe WHY China has built these camps. It wasn't a whim, and it wasn't a way to manufacture cheap clothing or make use of slave labor. China has had a problem with Uighur terrorism for more than twenty years. Uighur terrorist actions are well documented at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China#Chronology_of_major_events Like most terrorist actions around the world, the perpetrators do not represent the wider ethnic groups or religions to which they belong. They are an aberration. The Chinese government has built these camps in an attempt to assimilate Xighurs into the general Chinese society. A bad solution to a difficult problem. This was probably viewed as a better solution that a military occupation of Xinjiang Province. Of course, the Chinese could grant independence to Xinjiang Province. That's something that China wouldn't do, anymore than the US would allow the Confederate States to withdraw from the Union many years ago. The authors of this article are well aware that the re-education camps were built in an attempt to address Uighur terrorism, yet this is simply not described in the article. Understanding WHY the Chinese have taken such measures does not undercut the message that the camps are a violation of human rights. The information would simply provide some context.

There is one way in which this article is misleading. It implies that the people arrested and held in camps are all or mostly poor farmers or uneducated laborers, for whom factory jobs, *if they were in a free labor market and if the workers were free to live normal lives outside of work, which of course is not the case,* might provide a decent living. In fact, in addition to farmers and unskilled laborers, a lot of writers, artists, scholars, entertainers, engineers, entrepreneurs and others with advanced education and professional skills have also been arrested. While the injustice toward both groups is morally the same, the arrest and detention of professionals belies the argument that inmates are all getting useful job training.

And the difference between this and our commercial prison system is???

Why don't we try something new and stay out of the business of other countries. We are not the best of them all yet we want to dictate to others what they should do. All of this under this under the "Human Rights" shield. That shield is killing Europe. This is China and China will do what it wants.

Many, many American prisons to this day pay inmates less than $1.00 an hour for their labor. In this way we're as bad as the Chinese.

Meet the "new" China. Same as the old anti-human one.

Xinjiang was already a giant open air prison, where Uighurs were persecuted and subject to oppressive surveillance, before internment camps were set up. China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) peddles its goodwill of providing for the Muslim minority in Xinjiang, urging the detained Uighurs to “sense the party's thought, obey the party's words, follow the party's lead” - words printed in red on a building at an internment camp. The party’s “re-education” programme aims to brainwash the Uighurs - they have to disavow their beliefs while praising the CCP. This includes eating pork and drinking alcohol, according to a former inmate. In reality they toil in forced labour slavery, and won’t – contrary to party propaganda – escape from “poverty, backwardness” etc. After their release they will face discrimination for being an ethnic minority. Xinjiang is one of China’s wealthiest provinces and also one of its most restive. Home to one and a half per cent of China's population, half the region's roughly 26 million people, it accounts for over 20% of arrests nation wide. Before Xi Jinping came to power, the party’s draconian control over the society was losing its dynamism. Xi then extended a sweeping government overhaul that gave the CCP greater control over all aspects of life, creating a police state in China.

I caught a taxi from LAX to Santa Monica at the beginning of the year. The driver idenified himself as from East Turkmenistan. He had escaped many years earlier. To say he hates the Han Chinese and what they are doing to his country and people, is a very significant understatement. We need to discover how we can protest these events/help protect these people from this vicious regime.

This is ongoing cultural genocide in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and needs steady international attention. Only through steady exposure and shaming by international organizations will the Chinese realize that they can't keep this up if they wish to participate as an equal in the community of nations.

I've lived in China for 10 years. From my understanding the move was somewhat predictable. First, Xinjiang have never been peaceful, with occasional terrorist attacks happening every year. Instead of addressing the issue, the government just imprisoned Muslims (Similar to US travel ban but even more cruel) to look "tough" and "strong". Ordinary Chinese people are going to take serious consequences for their government, as you generally can't achieve peace with violence. Second, the labor cost in China have risen significantly during the past few years. Business and political leaders are very unhappy about the lack of labor force. You can say they are learning from the US private prison system. Third, the current global environment lacks a sensible leader, so it's normal for authortian governments to treat their people badly. The stuff happening in Xinjiang is literally my childhood nightmare coming true. The only relief: I can cowardly hide in Wisconsin for now and not panic too much.

For all its flaws, our democracy would never undertake something like this. Americans need to work harder to protect our free and civil society.

This is not an attempt to justify internment or (non violent) political imprisonment, they are plain wrong and morally reprehensible. However, how does that differ from the chain gang, making license plates or sending inmates to clean highway or even fight fire in the U.S.? To be clear, re-education camps in China and N Korea are the same, inhuman! However, if they are treated well physically but required to work for an exchange of decent wages - which are highly unlikely, one has to surmise - then this reporting will be more complete.

another reason to buy as little from China as possible...

So Trump's trade tangle with the Chinese might also serve the purpose of raising the Uighur issue and the labor camps with them? Or is that too much to ask of an administration which only cares about the USA side of things?

Thanks for highlighting the plight of these muslims and other ethnic minorities. There is not a lot of focus on these human right violations and there needs to be more. I for one will examine were my clothes are made more closely to prevent affording the CCP any economic advantage from this horrendous scheme.

I don't understand the Chinese government's motivation here. It's control of natural resources in remote areas, most likely? It's not as though China has a shortage of willing factory workers. Maybe there's some element of ethnic purity, but these are far flung regions, as far as I can see quite far from China's cultural centers. I'm guessing these groups would probably just like to be left alone to love quietly. The PR blowback alone makes this approach seem pretty suspect.