China's Far West provinces (inc. Tibet)

[AdamG]

Bacon-and-beer punishment.

Former inmates have told of the horror after being detained in China's indoctrination camps for Muslims, where they were physically and mentally tortured.

Around 900,000 to one million Muslims are estimated to have been detained in such re-education camps in China's western province of Xinjiang as Beijing tries to clamp down on potential separatist movements.

Omir Bekali and Kayrat Samarkand, both former detainees, have told the Washington Post that these former prisoners have been forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, forbidden in Islam, as punishment.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/chin...ims-camps.html

[davidbfpo]

More of a pointer to a 2017 ICCT report on Uighur jihadist fighters beyond China and a forthcoming book that has chapters on the Uighur insurgency.

So two links. The first is to the ICCT report:

n November 2017, we co-authored “Uighur Foreign Fighters: An Underexamined Jihadist Challenge,” published by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism- The Hague (ICCT). Uighurs, specifically individuals of Turkic decent from China’s northwest province of Xinjiang, have become a noticeable part of the constellation of globally active jihadist terror groups

Link:https://icct.nl/publication/uighur-f...ist-challenge/

The second is really an advert and the book is due out next month:

There has been some relatively recent research in this area which we have followed with great interest. Michael Clarke has a forthcoming book Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (Hurst, 2018) in China that examines an array of issues related to Uighur terrorism and includes chapters by Raffaello Pantucci on “Uighur Terrorism in a Fractured Middle East” and Sean Roberts on “The Narrative of Uighur Terrorism and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Uighur Militancy.” Other recent research has focused on China’s use of technology as a counter-terrorism tool, including articles such as “China Has Turned Xinjiang Into a Police State Like No Other,” from The Economist, and similar research by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on “China’s Approach to International Terrorism,” and the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor on “The Uighurs and China’s Regional Counter-Terrorism Efforts.”

Link:https://icct.nl/publication/reflecti...ist-challenge/

[AdamG]

Thousands of Muslims gathered at a mosque in northwestern China on Friday to protest its planned demolition in a rare public pushback to the government's efforts to rewrite how religions are practiced in the country. A large crowd of Hui people, a Muslim ethnic minority, began congregating at the towering Grand Mosque in the town of Weizhou on Thursday, local Hui residents told The Associated Press by phone.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/thousands...173224239.html

Weizhou (China) (AFP) - Authorities in northern China delayed the demolition of a massive mosque on Saturday after thousands of people demonstrated to stop its destruction, local residents said, amid a nationwide government drive to tighten restrictions on religious activities. Across China, officials have sought to limit religious freedoms for Muslims as part of a widespread attempt to bring believers in line with the dictates of the ruling Communist Party. Protesters began gathering Thursday ahead of a deadline to demolish the grand mosque in the town of Weizhou in the northern Ningxia region, local residents said.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mosque-pr...084809410.html

[AdamG]

China has rejected claims one million of its mostly Muslim Uighur minority are being held in internment camps, while it has also insisted "there are no such things" as re-education centres.

The country responded to concerns, raised by a member of a UN human rights committee, that its Xinjiang region has been turned into "something resembling a massive internment camp, shrouded in secrecy, a sort of no-rights zone".

Human rights expert Gay McDougall, a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, last week highlighted reports that more than one million ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities are being held in counter-extremism centres.

https://news.sky.com/story/china-den...camps-11471917

[davidbfpo]

Via SWJ Blog on Twitter, even if on the BBC I'd missed it. It is a short summary, with nothing new.
Link:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-45474279

[davidbfpo]

A Soufan Group commentary and a couple of passages:

What most recent analysis on the subject glosses over, however, is that China has attempted to portray broad segments of the Uighur population as a potential terrorist threat while offering no evidence of tangible connections to militancy.
(Ends with) While the government feels that a draconian counter-terrorism strategy has been successful in limiting attacks on Chinese soil, many recently implemented policies may prove to be counterproductive in the long-term.

Link:http://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrie...d-in-xinjiang/

[davidbfpo]

A first-hand report on the situation from a previously unheard of Russian website. Makes you think.
Link:https://meduza.io/en/feature/2018/10...illion-uyghurs