The post is part of an article in the Al Jazeera newspaper from September 13, 2018, but is very actual because the situation for the Chinese Muslims, the Uighurs, has continued to worsen.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/9/13/china-holds-one-million-uighur-muslims-in-concentration-camps
The crux of ethnic cleansing: Brainwashing children
In The Atlantic, Sigal Samuel wrote, “China’s crackdown has some Uighurs in Xinjiang worried that their own children will incriminate them, whether accidentally or because teachers urge kids to spy on their parents.” Samuel’s work helped spur discussion about the horrors taking place in Xinjiang beyond the internment camps, which created an entryway to learn about the other tentacles of China’s ethnic cleansing programme, particularly those targeting Uighur children.
China’s project of breaking up the family unit, the building block of Uighur Muslim society in Xinjiang, is achieved through the routine programme of marshalling children to report on the religious activities of their parents to (state-controlled) teachers. But also the formal institution of state-run orphanages, where the sons and daughters of interned Uighurs undergo a programme of cultural brainwashing and assimilation tailored for children.
Within the walls of these orphanages, where “[children] between the ages of six months and 12 years are locked up like farm animals,” Chinese authorities carry out what is perhaps the crux of their ethnic cleansing program: engineering an entire generation of Uighur Muslims to turn their back on their parents, religion and culture, in favour of the atheism, Mandarin language and Han customs privileged by Beijing and in turn, stripping the Uighur people from their very lifeline, their children, and paving a pathway towards the utter decimation of 10 million Uighur Muslims and a nation that existed before the creation of the modern Chinese state.
