September 22, 2022
Since 2017, the Chinese government has reportedly detained over a million Muslims in so-called reeducation camps. The majority of those detained are Muslim Uyghurs, a largely Turkic-speaking ethnic group predominantly from China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. In addition to mass detentions, Uyghurs in Xinjiang have faced severe surveillance, forced labor, and involuntary sterilizations, among other human rights abuses.
The United States and several other countries have characterized China’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide, while the UN human rights office has suggested that these violations may amount to crimes against humanity. Chinese officials, however, deny any wrongdoing, asserting that they closed the reeducation camps in 2019. Despite these claims, international journalists and researchers have used satellite images, individual testimonies, and leaked Chinese government documents to document an ongoing system of mass detention across the region.
**When Did Mass Detentions of Muslims Begin?**
Since 2017, estimates suggest that between 800,000 and 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslims, including ethnic Kazakhs and Uzbeks, have been detained, according to international researchers and U.S. government sources. The Chinese government refers to these facilities as “vocational education and training centers,” while international media and researchers commonly call them reeducation camps, internment camps, or detention camps. Some activists even describe them as concentration camps.
Outside these camps, the eleven million Uyghurs in Xinjiang—officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region—continue to suffer from a long-standing crackdown by Chinese authorities.
Experts indicate that the reeducation campaign began in Xinjiang in 2014 but was significantly expanded in 2017. That year, new reeducation camps were built, and existing facilities were enlarged. Reuters journalists, using satellite imagery, observed that thirty-nine of these camps nearly tripled in size between April 2017 and August 2018, covering an area roughly equivalent to 140 soccer fields. Similarly, German researcher Adrian Zenz noted a 20 billion yuan (approximately $2.96 billion) increase in security-related construction spending in Xinjiang in 2017.
In late 2019, Xinjiang’s governor claimed that those detained in the reeducation camps had “graduated.” While some camps were indeed closed, the following year, researchers from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) identified over 380 suspected detention facilities using satellite images. They found that China had converted some lower-security reeducation camps into formal detention centers or prisons, expanded existing detention centers, and built new high-security facilities throughout Xinjiang. Chinese officials have criticized ASPI, alleging that it is an anti-China organization funded by Australia and the United States. Authorities have increasingly relied on the formal justice system to imprison people for extended periods. In 2022, Human Rights Watch reported that, according to Xinjiang government figures, half a million people had been prosecuted since 2017. The Associated Press found that in one county, approximately one in twenty-five people had been sentenced to prison on terrorism-related charges, all of whom were Uyghurs.
**What Has Happened in the Reeducation Camps?**
Most individuals detained in the reeducation camps were never formally charged with crimes and had no legal recourse to challenge their detentions. Detainees have been targeted for a range of reasons, such as traveling to or communicating with individuals from one of the twenty-six countries China deems sensitive, attending mosque services, having more than three children, or sending texts with Quranic verses. Human rights groups assert that many Uyghurs are labeled extremists simply for practicing their religion.
Information about conditions in the camps is limited, but many detainees who have since fled China have reported severe conditions. A 2022 UN human rights office report, based on interviews with numerous detainees, revealed “patterns of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” in the camps from 2017 to 2019.
This report corroborates earlier findings by international journalists, researchers, and human rights organizations. Exposés have shown that detainees are coerced into pledging loyalty to the Communist Party, renouncing Islam, singing praises for communism, and learning Mandarin. Reports describe prison-like environments with constant surveillance, including cameras and microphones. Some detainees have reported torture and sleep deprivation during interrogations, while others have faced sexual abuse, including rape. Some released detainees have contemplated suicide or witnessed others do so.
The detentions have also disrupted families, with children of detained parents often forced into state-run orphanages.
