I think just about everyone has heard about the plight of the Muslim minority Uighur population in China. There are currently an estimated 2 million of them locked away in reeducation camps.  As it turns out, locking them up is only one facet of the treatment these people receive. Forced sterilization and abortions are fairly common.

This isn’t the story you get from the Chinese media though. They have actually claimed that many of the people that have voluntarily attended the vocational training camps have been released and found jobs:

Zakir said on Monday: “At present, all the trainees who participated … have completed their studies, found stable employment with the help of the government and have improved their quality of life and live a happy life.”

He said the programme focused on teaching Chinese language skills, law and vocational skills to “eliminate extremism”.

Meanwhile they keep building more “vocational training centers” to help the poor minority.  It isn’t surprising to see story after story of people who have managed to escape and tell their side.

None of that stops the Chinese government from looking down their collectivist noses at the US though. They took to the Global Times just today to lecture us on human rights:

Even if the US rejoins the UNHRC, it would be very difficult for the country to regain its so-called leadership on human rights issues. The COVID-19 death toll has reached over 465,000 in the US as of press time, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. This is a humanitarian tragedy. The US claims to be a “beacon” of democracy and human rights, and it used to have an almost monopolistic say in the field of human rights. But it’s disappointing the COVID-19 fight has become the US’ Waterloo. Mass shootings in the US are also disturbingly common.

I am not sure how people dying of a pandemic and gunshot wounds equates to government sponsored imprisonment and sterilization. That is only part of the point they make though. They also point to the “domestic chaos in the US” which can’t be brushed under the rug. That the riots were actually encouraged by members of our own government adds weight to that claim.

As we move into this new administration and look at what is happening with the party in power, it makes you wonder how far away we are from reeducation centers ourselves. It has already been talked about. Via The New American:

A California Democrat operative and recently elected member of the Democrat National Committee has called for supporters of President Trump to be subjected to a program that sounds uncomfortably like “reeducation.”

Taking to Twitter on November 17, DNC member David Atkins tweeted: “No seriously … how *do* you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook?” He continued: “We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South.”

We like to think that imprisonment or reeducation for political beliefs would never happen here. I am not so sure some of these people aren’t serious. We may need to start believing they are.