Over the past two years or so, the Chinese government has been gathering Uighur people and other minorities in China and moving them into detention camps.

Uighurs are Muslim people of China who live in the far west region of China, called Xinjiang. According to BBC, Xinjiang is considered an autonomous region to China, just like Tibet.

What goes on inside these camps is nothing short of horrifying.

According to NPR, the Chinese government has stated that the point of these camps is to re-educate the people they are detaining, along with the other minorities they deem necessary, as a counterterrorism movement. 

This particular bias against Uighur people seems to start with President Xi Jinping following a suicide bombing in 2014 involving two Uighur extremists. Since the attack occurred, Jinping’s actions against the Uighur people seem to have only accelerated.

Thanks to an anonymous source inside the Chinese government’s political structure, the New York Times was able to publish 400 pages of evidence that proved the camps’ horrifying actions were sanctioned by the president.

Students from the Xinjiang region returned home to find their relatives were gone, apparently taken to the detention camps in an effort to make them functioning members of society. 

When students asked if their families had committed any crime to warrant this, they were told by police that it wasn’t like that, however, their families were not allowed to leave the camps.

The students were also told their behavior could either shorten or lengthen their family members’ stays in the camps.

Propaganda videos have been released by the Chinese government that portray the camps as simple re-education centers where the detainees are not mistreated in any way. 

However, footage has emerged over time proving that these videos are false. According to The Guardian, drone footage has been uploaded showing inmates being loaded onto trains while their arms are bound and their eyes blindfolded.

There are even allegations that the government has been forcefully harvesting organs from those inside the camps, something the government denies. According to Business Insider, China Tribunal claimed in front of the United Nations that they have proof of this as well.

The report said the government has had many people “killed to order.” The ones being used to harvest organs, usually Uighur people or practitioners of Falun Gong, were reportedly “cut open while still alive,” in order to access their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea and skin.

In response to this, many are calling for those who need organ donations to not travel for surgeries in China, since it is most likely that the organs being used are from the Xinjiang camps and were not willingly given.

On Tuesday, Dec. 3, Congress finally passed a bill that condemns China for the persecution of ethnic Muslims. According to CBS News, the House of Representatives voted 407-1 in approving the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act. 

This genocide of minorities in China is a gross violation of human rights and more direct action must be taken to end it as soon as possible.

The Chinese detention camps are a terrifyingly similar parallel to the concentration camps of the Holocaust. If the global community truly wants such genocides to remain part of the world’s history, action must be taken to stop this immediately.

Spierings can be reached [email protected].