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Everything you need to know about the Uyghur concentration and labor camps in northern China

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By the summer of 2019, the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic, there were nearly 200 Uyghur concentration and labor camps in the northern Chinese state of Xinjiang. However, by late September of 2020, nearly 180 camps were built– a total of 380 camps– and alongside the internment and enslavement of an estimated 8 million Uyghur Chinese people.

Rushan Abbas, a Uyghur Chinese-immigrant operating in the United States whose sister is currently subjected to forced labor in a CCP concentration camp, has been the main advocate in the U.S. for recognizing the CCP’s crimes against humanity. She has recently spoken out against the Biden administration, saying that “Many countries continue to do business with China. It reminds me of the Holocaust because when Nazi Germany was holding millions of Jewish people in the concentration camps, many countries continued to do business with Nazi Germany. And for the sake of the economy, the same thing is happening as back then when the country tried to claim ignorance.” Supporting Rushan’s claim, China has largely benefited from trade during the COVID-19 pandemic, as in a one-month period China sold an estimated 4 billion masks– a product that is produced in Xinjiang concentration camps. 

Since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in the name of “counter-terrormism,” has led a campaign that promotes the mass subjugation, deportation, enslavement, and even extermination of the Uyghur Chinese people. The aggression towards the Uyghur people by the CCP is largely a sentiment motivated by ethnicity and religious tensions. Alluded to by Rushan Abbas, the CCP’s aggression is not unlike the ethnic-religious motivations seen in the Nazi’s “Final Solution.” 

Similar to the CCP’s treatment of the Uyghur Chinese Muslims and Turks, the NSDAP (Nazi Party) used the internment of ethnic minorities as a source of harsh labor for the production of armaments essential to the German war effort. Several experts on global genocide have noted that ‘the COVID-19 global pandemic is acting for the CCP as the Second World War acted for the NSDAP.’ 

The CCP has reacted to ‘the war’ in a nearly identical way to the Nazi Reichminister of the Armaments Albert Speer reacted to the actual war. While Speer used Jewish slave labor from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s concentration camps to fuel the war economy, the CCP has forced Uyghur prisoners to make products that fuel the ‘pandemic economy.’ Additionally, while during WWII the Einsatzgruppen-SS– or “SS Extermination Squads–” were responsible for the execution of any Jews who refused to work, the CCP’s Mobile Execution Units have operated an identical role for the execution of Chinese Muslims and Turks. While the situation is unfolding, millions of Uyghur Chinese people are currently subjected to harsh quotas and acts that could easily be identified as crimes against humanity. The crisis occurring in Xinjiang requires international recognition of the crimes. However, it’s not clear how long it will be until that happens.

ARTICLE: CARSON WOLF

POLITICS EDITOR: CARSON CHOATE

PHOTO CREDITS: BBC

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