BBC:China Muslims: Xinjiang schools used to separate children from families

[hausga 615]

i honestly cannot feel more disgusted of what is happening their to poor muslims in china

imo no child regardless of race or religion should suffer this

 

China is deliberately separating Muslim children from their families, faith and language in its far western region of Xinjiang, according to new research.

At the same time as hundreds of thousands of adults are being detained in giant camps, a rapid, large-scale campaign to build boarding schools is under way.

Based on publicly available documents, and backed up by dozens of interviews with family members overseas, the BBC has gathered some of the most comprehensive evidence to date about what is happening to children in the region.

Records show that in one township alone more than 400 children have lost not just one but both parents to some form of internment, either in the camps or in prison.

Formal assessments are carried out to determine whether the children are in need of "centralised care".

Alongside the efforts to transform the identity of Xinjiang's adults, the evidence points to a parallel campaign to systematically remove children from their roots.

Image captionThe Hotan Kindness Kindergarten, like many others, is a high security facility

China's tight surveillance and control in Xinjiang, where foreign journalists are followed 24 hours a day, make it impossible to gather testimony there. But it can be found in Turkey.

In a large hall in Istanbul, dozens of people queue to tell their stories, many of them clutching photographs of children, all now missing back home in Xinjiang.

"I don't know who is looking after them," one mother says, pointing to a picture of her three young daughters, "there is no contact at all."

Another mother, holding a photo of three sons and a daughter, wipes away her tears. "I heard that they've been taken to an orphanage," she says.

In 60 separate interviews, in wave after wave of anxious, grief-ridden testimony, parents and other relatives give details of the disappearance in Xinjiang of more than 100 children.

In just one year, 2017, the total number of children enrolled in kindergartens in Xinjiang increased by more than half a million. And Uighur and other Muslim minority children, government figures show, made up more than 90% of that increase.

As a result, Xinjiang's pre-school enrolment level has gone from below the national average to the highest in China by far.

 

In the south of Xinjiang alone, an area with the highest concentration of Uighur populations, the authorities have spent an eye watering $1.2bn on the building and upgrading of kindergartens.

Mr Zenz's analysis suggests that this construction boom has included the addition of large amounts of dormitory space.

Xinhe County Youyi Kindergarten has space for 700 children, 80% of whom are from Xinjiang's minority groups

Xinjiang's education expansion is driven, it appears, by the same ethos as underlies the mass incarceration of adults. And it is clearly affecting almost all Uighur and other minority children, whether their parents are in the camps or not.

 

 

In April last year, the county authorities relocated 2,000 children from the surrounding villages into yet another giant boarding middle school, Yecheng County Number 4.

Dragging the slider reveals the pace of construction - the two middle schools, separated by a shared sports field, are each three times larger than the national average and were built in little more than a year.

Government propaganda extols the virtues of boarding schools as helping to "maintain social stability and peace" with the "school taking the place of the parents." And Mr Zenz suggests there is a deeper purpose.

"Boarding schools provide the ideal context for a sustained cultural re-engineering of minority societies," he argues.

 

Why is there tension between China and the Uighurs?

China's Muslim camp spending 'revealed'

There are the detailed forms used by local authorities to log the situations of children with parents in vocational training or in prison, and to determine whether they need centralised care.

Mr Zenz found one government document that details various subsidies available to "needy groups", including those families where "both a husband and a wife are in vocational training". And a directive issued to education bureaus by the city of Kashgar that mandates them to look after the needs of students with parents in the camps as a matter of urgency.

Schools should "strengthen psychological counselling", the directive says, and "strengthen students' thought education" - a phrase that finds echoes in the camps holding their parents.

It is clear that the effect of the mass internments on children is now viewed as a significant societal issue, and that some effort is going into dealing with it, although it is not something the authorities are keen to publicise.

Media captionThe BBC has found new evidence of the increasing control and suppression of Islam in China

Some of the relevant government documents appear to have been deliberately hidden from search engines by using obscure symbols in place of the term "vocational training". That said, in some instances the adult detention camps have kindergartens built close by, and, when visiting, Chinese state media reporters have extolled their virtues.

 

 

These boarding schools, they say, allow minority children to learn "better life habits" and better personal hygiene than they would at home. Some children have begun referring to their teachers as "mummy".

We telephoned a number of local Educa tion Bureaus in Xinjiang to try to find out about the official policy in such cases. Most refused to speak to us, but some gave brief insights into the system.

We asked one official what happens to the children of those parents who have been taken to the camps.

"They're in boarding schools," she replied. "We provide accommodation, food and clothes… and we've been told by the senior level that we must look after them well.

 

Back in Xinjiang, the research shows that all children now find themselves in schools that are secured with "hard isolation closed management measures." Many of the schools bristle with full-coverage surveillance systems, perimeter alarms and 10,000 Volt electric fences, with some school security spending surpassing that of the camps.

The policy was issued in early 2017, at a time when the detentions began to be dramatically stepped up. Was the state, Mr Zenz wonders, seeking to pre-empt any possibility on the part of Uighur parents to forcibly recover their children?

"I think the evidence for systematically keeping parents and children apart is a clear indication that Xinjiang's government is attempting to raise a new generation cut off from original roots, religious beliefs and their own language," he tells me.

"I believe the evidence points to what we must call cultural genocide."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48825090

this was literally the same things which were happening during the predominant Nazi era in Germany 

it's crazy how history really repeat itself

those poor children

guys plz read this 

[Lilmonzter 2,864]

People kinda sorta keep quiet about it cause of islamaphobia it's a thing and it's happening in China, people dont know what do with the human rights violations in China and North Korea! 🤦‍♂️

[Lilmonzter 2,864]

4 minutes ago, hausga said:

thank you so much

like even in GGD no one seem to talk about incidents like these which are truly ignored by western media

* i wish i could give a reaction to your comment but i ran out lol *

Me too🤣

[LateToCult 41,843]

I went to a talk about the ethnic bias in China’s criminal system at my school about a month ago and the professor mentioned that by her and her team’s estimates their could be over 2 million Muslims in this type of “re-educating” incarceration. It’s really a horrible thing that’s going on.

[gumzy3000 7,899]

This is horrific. Thank you for posting about this and spreading awareness. It is sad many people do not know about this. The more people who know, the more our governments will put pressure on China to stop this madness.  But we are talking about China, a very complex country with growing power. Scary stuff 

[LilyLark 10,213]

3 minutes ago, hausga said:

2 ****ing million what

sadly nothing would change however

the world relies on china's trade and investment as well as their products

the position where china is in the 21st century it is literally impossible for any nation(i mean any nation) to hold them accountable for any sort of crime or action

It's horrific. And yes, I completely agree that no one is holding them accountable because China is just so insanely powerful. Did you watch the short documentary by Isobel Yeung on the Uighur? What is especially shocking is that they are coming for people with duel citizenship—having duel citizenship was always kind of a "protection" before in most countries because there was the obvs. the belief that the other country would protest their citizen getting locked up, etc (of course, there are exceptions like in Iran people could get accused of being spies, etc). But there has been crickets from Australia....despite several Australian citizens being locked up when they went back to China.

[LilyLark 10,213]

Just now, hausga said:

No surprise Australia is trying everything it's best to mend it's frosty relations with china after decade of supporting US stance in the Pacific. i also hear there desperate to get themselves involved into the so called great china

silk road

 

 

I think most of it is about the silk road and the potential $$$$ they can get from partnering on some projects in Africa and Central Asia, etc.

[Delusional Aura 5,129]

I mean after being bombarded with western propaganda about islamic terrorists, can you really blame the chinese government for taking measures to protect the wider population? It's wrong yes but understand is two million compared to 1.3 billion chinese. More than likely, the government is taking measures to protect the majority by re-educating them about chinese culture and somehow telling them islam is not the way to prosper in the chinese civilization. You have to understand that western values are not universal values and the chinese are not gonna change their ways to please western powers. They are way too powerful for that. At least they are not in the US's concentration camps and they are actually being fed and taken care of.

Should we give china the benefit of the doubt? I personally 100% believe so. They brought 700M people out of poverty in 30-40 years. No country will ever do that or be able to ever achieve that. Also don't tell me those people are being paid little or it's slave labour at least its work people did and got paid to survive. On the other hand, India the world'd largest democracy, has western values yet they won't ever achieve what the chinese have even though both countries were at the same point 40 years ago yet remain dirt poor. A generation of chinese was sacrificed for the well being of future generations. That should be applauded as sick as it sounds. This is what westerners won't ever understand.

You must understand as well that the chinese knows what poverty and brutal hardship feels like, the western world of today will never understand that type of poverty and hardship. They will do things that will seem weird to westerners and re-educating 2 million muslims to protect their country they spent the last 40 years building is okay to them because they aren't gonna let anyone destroy what they suffered to build. Blame the western world for spreading islamphobia, the chinese are just protecting themselves. Put yourself in the shoes of leaders that have to take care of 1.3 bn people where millions are still in poverty today. 

[Delusional Aura 5,129]

1 minute ago, hausga said:

umm the western propaganda only started to report on Islamic terrorist thing from the last 2 decades

while for Uighur Muslims this kind of persecution has been having from centuries after the passing of Kublai khan

what was the justification then? 

Oh sh!t....well i'm out 

Okay, the Communist party is atheist so they are re-educating them to not believe in God. 

I don't have any justification 

[dit 46,738]

Yeah it is really sad and freaky what is happening to the Muslim Chinese (specifically the Uighurs). My heart breaks whenever I see those stories of families being separated from each other. There was one girl she thought he dad was killed by police, grew up and then found that her dad was STILL in a re education center via a promotional video the chinese government released which featured her dad in the background. It's devastating.