A racist country, a persecuted minority and a world blind to the events at hand.

Muslims have been the center of abuse in China since 2017 and are currently being tortured for their beliefs. China has implemented detention camps that are holding over one million Uighur Muslims. In these centers, detainees are taught how to live like the average Chinese citizen in hopes to get rid of the “extremists.” They view the Uighur Muslims as possible terrorists and threats to China. 

Asiye Abdulahat, a Uighur Muslim, is a most wanted woman in China for her exposure of Chinese documents about the detention camps. Abdulahat told reporter Malcolm Brabant from PBS News in January about the treatment of Muslims in these camps. Documents showed how Uighur Muslims endured psychological torture and had to conform to the Chinese method. Their method refers to a passive way of life with no threat to the country. Chinese officials have told civilians via state-run media that the Uighurs are a massive threat and have participated in murder, poisoining, and terrorism for around three decades. The exposure and collection of the documents put her life in serious danger, but Abdulahat risked death to show everyone the terrifying punishments Muslims are receiving in China.

“When I decided to reveal myself, I forced myself to forget the word ‘worry,’” Abdulahat said. “And that’s because the person who sent me these documents has sacrificed his own life.”

NBC recently visited three of China’s camps, or as China calls them, “vocational education and training centers.” It is unknown whether these buildings were modified for NBC’s arrival, but reporter Keir Simmons learned that the Chinese officials would make Muslims talk in Mandarin as well as learn about the Chinese law. 

This is just one of the many troubling practices that several activists claim are happening in the camps. Omar Kanat, director of the Uighur Human Rights Project, goes so far as to  the Chinese are attempting to eradicate Uighur culture and beliefs.

“They are forcing the detainees to renounce their religion, renounce their culture, renounce their identity [and] force them to speak Mandarin,” Kanat said. He called these re-education facilities “concentration camps” because of how the Muslims are being treated.

Some refugees have also told NBC that family members of theirs have been detained in China, and that they have not seen them since they were apprehended. 

Abdulhaber Rejep, a Uighur Muslim who used to live in China, told NBC his wife never returned to him and their child after attempting to retrieve their four other children from Xinjiang and take them to Turkey. This is just one of many families who suffered loss due to the separation and discrimination happening in China. 

This situation is not well known as it has not been thoroughly covered by major news outlets online, in print, or on televised news. Without international attention, it is hard for others to intervene and help those in trouble in other countries. 

“Any type of persecution by a government against its own people should be covered in depth because pressure needs to come from other powerful countries to force the guilty government of the guilty country to stop and change their policy,” Columbia Heights High School social studies teacher Ms. Natasha Olubajo said. 

The situation is bad both in China and the reaction around the world, and with no involvement from influential countries, the problem will only get worse for the Uighur Muslims that are already forced to do the Chinese government’s bidding and those who have yet to join them.