{"id":1493,"date":"2019-12-30T13:35:30","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T13:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=1493"},"modified":"2019-12-30T13:35:30","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T13:35:30","slug":"in-chinas-crackdown-on-muslims-children-have-not-been-spared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=1493","title":{"rendered":"In China\u2019s Crackdown on Muslims, Children Have Not Been Spared"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Children leaving school in Hotan, China, this month.\u00a0Beijing has used schools in the city and across the region of Xinjiang to indoctrinate Uighur children.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Giulia Marchi for The New York Times<\/span><\/p>\n

By Amy Qin,\u00a0 The New York Times<\/p>\n

Dec. 28 , 2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

HOTAN, China \u2014 The first grader was a good student and beloved by her classmates, but she was inconsolable, and it was no mystery to her teacher why.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most heartbreaking thing is that the girl is often slumped over on the table alone and crying,\u201d he wrote on his blog. \u201cWhen I asked around, I learned that it was because she missed her mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mother, he noted, had been sent to a detention camp for Muslim ethnic minorities. The girl\u2019s father had passed away, he added. But instead of letting other relatives raise her, the authorities put her in a state-run boarding school \u2014 one of hundreds of such facilities that have opened in China\u2019s far western Xinjiang region.<\/p>\n

As many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others have been sent to\u00a0internment camps and prisons in Xinjiang<\/a>\u00a0over the past three years, an indiscriminate clampdown aimed at weakening the population\u2019s devotion to Islam. Even as these mass detentions have provoked global outrage, though, the Chinese government is pressing ahead with a parallel effort targeting the region\u2019s children.<\/p>\n

Nearly a half million children have been separated from their families and placed in boarding schools so far, according to a\u00a0planning document<\/a>\u00a0published on a government website, and the ruling Communist Party has set a goal of operating one to two such schools in each of Xinjiang\u2019s 800-plus townships by the end of next year.<\/p>\n

The party has presented the schools as a way to fight poverty, arguing that they make it easier for children to attend classes if their parents live or work in remote areas or are unable to care for them. And it is true that many rural families are eager to send their children to these schools, especially when they are older.<\/p>\n

But the schools are also designed to assimilate and indoctrinate children at an early age, away from the influence of their families, according to the planning document, published in 2017. Students are often forced to enroll because the authorities have detained their parents and other relatives, ordered them to take jobs far from home or judged them unfit guardians.<\/p>\n

The schools are off limits to outsiders and tightly guarded, and it is difficult to interview residents in Xinjiang without putting them at risk of arrest. But a troubling picture of these institutions emerges from interviews with Uighur parents living in exile and a review of documents published online, including procurement records, government notices, state media reports and the blogs of teachers in the schools.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A boarding middle school in Hotan. A government document says such schools immerse children in a Chinese-speaking environment away from the influence of religion.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Giulia Marchi for The New York Times<\/span><\/p>\n

State media and official documents describe education as a key component of President Xi Jinping\u2019s campaign to wipe out extremist violence in Xinjiang, a ruthless and far-reaching effort that also includes the mass internment camps and sweeping surveillance measures. The idea is to use the boarding schools as incubators of a new generation of Uighurs who are secular and more loyal to both the party and the nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe long-term strategy is to conquer, to captivate, to win over the young generation from the beginning,\u201d said Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington who has studied Chinese policies that break up Uighur families.<\/p>\n

To carry out the assimilation campaign, the authorities in Xinjiang have recruited tens of thousands of teachers from across China, often Han Chinese, the nation\u2019s dominant ethnic group. At the same time, prominent Uighur educators have been imprisoned and teachers have been warned they will be sent to the camps if they resist.<\/p>\n

Thrust into a regimented environment and immersed in an unfamiliar culture, children in the boarding schools are only allowed visits with family once every week or two \u2014 a restriction intended to \u201cbreak the impact of the religious atmosphere on children at home,\u201d in the words of the 2017 policy document.<\/p>\n

The campaign echoes past policies in\u00a0Canada,\u00a0the United States\u00a0and\u00a0Australia\u00a0that took indigenous children from their families and placed them in residential schools to forcibly assimilate them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big difference in China is the scale and how systematic it is,\u201d said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado who studies Uighur culture and society.<\/p>\n

Public discussion in China of the trauma inflicted on Uighur children by separating them from their families is rare. References on social media are usually quickly censored. Instead, the state-controlled news media focuses on the party\u2019s goals in the region, where predominantly Muslim minorities make up more than half the population of 25 million.<\/p>\n

Visiting a kindergarten near the frontier city of Kashgar this month, Chen Quanguo, the party\u2019s top official in Xinjiang,\u00a0urged<\/a>\u00a0teachers to ensure children learn to \u201clove the party, love the motherland and love the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Abdurahman Tohti, a Uighur living in Istanbul, saw his son in a video shared by a stranger on a Chinese social media platform.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n