{"id":4222,"date":"2018-10-21T15:51:36","date_gmt":"2018-10-21T15:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2018\/10\/21\/inside-chinas-re-education-centres-where-uighur-muslims-are-pressured-give-islam\/"},"modified":"2018-10-21T15:51:36","modified_gmt":"2018-10-21T15:51:36","slug":"inside-chinas-re-education-centres-where-uighur-muslims-are-pressured-give-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/inside-chinas-re-education-centres-where-uighur-muslims-are-pressured-give-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside China\u2019s \u2018re-education centres\u2019 where Uighur Muslims are pressured to give up Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the edge of a desert in far western China<\/a>, an imposing building sits behind a fence topped with barbed wire.<\/span><\/p>\n

Large red characters on the facade urge people to learn Chinese, study law and acquire job skills. Guards make clear that visitors are not welcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Inside, hundreds of ethnic Uighur Muslims<\/a> spend their days in a high-pressure indoctrination programme, where they are forced to listen to lectures, sing hymns praising the Chinese Communist Party<\/a> and write \u201cself-criticism\u201d essays, according to detainees who have been released.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The goal is to rid them of devotion to Islam<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Abdusalam <\/span>Muhemet<\/span>, 41, said the police detained him for reciting a verse of the Quran<\/a> at a funeral. After two months in a nearby camp, he and more than 30 others were ordered to renounce their past lives. <\/span>Mr<\/span> Muhemet said he went along but quietly seethed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat was not a place for getting rid of extremism,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThat was a place that will breed vengeful feelings and erase Uighur identity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This camp outside Hotan, an ancient oasis town in the Taklamakan Desert, is one of <\/span>hundreds<\/span> that China has built in the past few years. It is part of a campaign of breath-taking scale and ferocity that has swept up hundreds of thousands of Chinese Muslims for weeks or months of what critics describe as brainwashing, usually without criminal charges.<\/span><\/p>\n