Concentration Camps in China
Many know China has “reeducation camps” within the country, and has had them for quite a while. What they have failed to note is that these are not simply reeducation facilities, but instead modernized concentration camps. The Chinese media will argue that they are Vocational Education and Training Centers, despite them not being as such. Recently, this problem has been brought to light by mainstream media but only after it began involving the President of the United States. Even so, it has not gotten the media coverage it deserves. It is known to many that China is very secretive about what goes on within its country, and it is only a matter of time before said secrets are exposed. The most recently uncovered is the inhumane treatment of Muslims and other ethnic minorities within the confines of these camps.
In early 2020, PBS published an interview with two Muslim women who were previously held in these camps. One was detained for having WhatsApp, an app that is banned in China. Chinese officials claimed that the trainees housed within the camps were fully respected and not mistreated, but countless first-hand accounts tell a different story. A young girl, whose mother had been sent to a camp, and being left with no father, was sent to a boarding school rather than being sent to relatives. CBS filmed inside one of the camps. “These people are not prisoners, but students, willingly subjecting themselves to a kind of brainwashing” claimed one of the reporters. Chinese officials stated that the centers’ soul purpose was to “transform thoughts”. Officials denied any claim made about the appearance of the facilities, which were said to look like prisons.
One detail about this that raises suspicion is the change in layout of some camps. Previously, camps had security towers and large fences surrounding them, yet at some point, that changed, but only in a few locations. Exercise yards were turned to sports facilities, security towers were taken down. The thing suspicious about this, however, is that the only camps transformed in such a way were the ones reporters were to visit, implying the idea that they were to be used as “show camps”.
One may ask, what justifies the imprisonment of these people? They claim that they are simply catching criminals before they commit a crime, similar to how you know someone is capable of murder prior to them doing it. The purpose, officials claim, is “taking a person on the edge of a crime and returning them to normal society”.
Rooms are overcrowded, with up to ten people per room. A prisoner claims that if one were to spend longer than two minutes in the bathroom, they were to be beaten with an electrical rod over the head. Many people are said to have attempted suicide within these facilities, a few have succeeded. It is clear that the conditions within these facilities are not suitable for living.
It is true that these people are having their thoughts changed within the camps, but it is done involuntarily and set in a basis of religious and ethnic discrimination. It is situations like these that make one question the bias of the world today.
