Days within the prison blended together until they blurred into one. "In the morning we had one minute to use the bathroom. If we used it longer, we got punished," Jelilova shared. Following the bathroom drill, inmates were forced to sing Communist Party jingles: "Long live the Communist Party" and "I love China." After weeks, the Mandarin rolled from the prisoners' tongues and muted the native Uyghur they were restricted from speaking. These imposed disciplines were designed to treat the "illness" and systematically "wash [the captives'] brains clean" of it. Their ailment? The very ethnic and Muslim identity that defines who Jelilova and 15 million other Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang are, and what, in a surveillance society designed to subjugate them, they struggle to remain.

XREF: Relates to other coverage of China's Xinjiang internment camps and forced assimilation policies.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 533