What Beijing calls a “counterterrorism” drive has evolved into one of the most sweeping systems of repression in modern statecraft. Since 2017, Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have been targeted en masse— not for crimes committed, but for who they are.
Several reports makes clear that people were arrested for travelling abroad, studying abroad, speaking to relatives overseas or for minor signals of religious observance. Entire neighbourhoods were raided without warning. One local cadre recalled participating in a single night where police “made 60 arrests” in just one district— hoods, handcuffs, no explanation given.
The state’s message was unmistakable: everyone was suspect. Families did not know whether their relatives had been taken to a police station, a camp, or simply disappeared. And most detainees were told they were being held because they were “untrustworthy” or “suspicious”—labels that required no evidence and carried no right of appeal. It was not law enforcement; it was social engineering through fear.
Behind the walls: a system designed to erase autonomy
Once inside the internment camps, detainees encountered a world where the goal was not only control, but transformation. Days were rigidly choreographed. Cameras watched them while they slept, guards monitored toilet breaks, and even the act of speaking became a punishable offence if done in Uyghur rather than Mandarin. Survivors consistently reported being forced to sit still for hours, punished for glancing sideways, and required to memorise patriotic songs praising the Chinese Communist Party.
This was accompanied by psychological pressure and relentless ideological instruction. “It was not Allah who gave you all,” one detainee was told. “It was Xi Jinping.” Another survivor said the entire curriculum felt crafted to “destroy our religion and to assimilate us.”
But ideological pressure was only one part of the system. Torture was common. Detainees described beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, and prolonged shackling in the tiger chair. One man was beaten with a chair until it broke; another was left strapped to a tiger chair for three days, urinating and defecating in place until he died shortly afterward. Amnesty found that every single former detainee interviewed had experienced torture or degrading treatment.
Surveillance without limits, repression without pause
The brutality of the camps is only possible because Xinjiang’s broader environment is already smothered by surveillance. The region functions as a laboratory for population control: biometric data collection, intrusive interviews, frequent device inspections, an armada of cameras, and a maze of security checkpoints that track people’s movements in real time. Former residents said simply walking through a railway tunnel meant undergoing full-body scans—unless you were Han Chinese, in which case you often walked through unsearched. One official casually remarked: “Uyghurs have to be treated differently because there are no Han terrorists.”
Religion has been driven underground through intimidation. Former residents reported that by 2017, praying at home, teaching religious beliefs to children or even keeping Islamic artefacts was enough to be arrested. Government cadres entered homes without knocking, confiscating Qur’ans and anything written in Arabic while families watched helplessly. Public space, private space, digital space—none of it offered protection.
This environment ensures that even those never taken to camps live under an ever-present threat: one wrong gesture, one outdated app on a phone, one relative who studied in Turkey could be enough to trigger detention. The line between “free” residents and those behind barbed wire has been intentionally blurred, ensuring the entire population internalises the same fear.
Release without freedom, silence enforced by threat
Even when detainees are released, the system does not let them go. Most are required to attend ongoing political classes, host government employees in their homes, undergo routine surveillance, and request permission for the smallest movements. Many are pushed into factory labour—framed as an “extension” of their education—while others are quietly sentenced to prison for everyday behaviour that would not be an offence anywhere else.
And before anyone leaves a camp, the state extracts silence. Every former detainee interviewed by Amnesty said they were forced to sign a document forbidding them from discussing their experiences with anyone, especially foreign journalists. They were threatened with being returned to a camp—and their family members detained—if they dared to speak.
This enforced quiet is no accident. It is the final layer of a system built to function without witnesses. Beijing has burnished its secrecy by destroying documents, coaching detainees to give favourable answers to visiting journalists, and blocking independent access to the region. It has turned Xinjiang into a black box where abuses are hidden not because they are subtle, but because people are terrified into muteness.