Previous to the current anti-Muslim ethnic cleansing campaign, the Chinese government had sought for several decades to restrict the practice of Islam in the western Xinjiang region. However, more than half of the twenty-four million people in this Chinese province are Uighur Muslims. According to most estimates, over one million of these Uighur Muslim men, women, and children are now imprisoned inside internment camps. The government’s goal is nothing less than to erase Islamic identity from within China’s borders.

QUESTION: The scale of internment — over a million of 24 million — is worth verifying against independent estimates from international organizations.

XREF: Connects to ongoing international reporting on Xinjiang internment camps and UN investigations into human rights abuses there. SEED: A potential angle: charting the escalation from decades of religious restriction to full ethnic cleansing, tracing the policy trajectory.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 159