Persecution of Uyghurs in China
Since 2014, the government of China has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. There have been reports of mass arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, family separation, forced labor, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights. In 2014, the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping launched the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism, which involved surveillance and restrictions in Xinjiang. Beginning in 2017, under Xinjiang Party secretary Chen Quanguo, the government incarcerated over an estimated one million Uyghurs without legal process in internment camps officially described as "vocational education and training centers", in the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II. China began to wind down the camps in 2019, and some detainees were transferred to the penal system, while others were transferred to forced labor and factory work programs.
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