A detention centre for Muslims, China wants to convert them into "Communist Muslims"

A report by Canberra-based Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) states that at least 80,000 Uighur Muslims from the restive Xinjiang province, have been sent across factories in China that make goods for dozens of global brands as per a report here.

Using open-source public documents, satellite imagery, and media reports, the institute identified 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that have used labourers transferred from re-education centres in Xinjiang since 2017 as part of a programme known as “Xinjiang aid”.

In conditions that “strongly suggest forced labour”, the report says, workers live in segregated dormitories, are required to study Mandarin and undergo ideological training. They are frequently subjected to surveillance and barred from observing religious practices. According to government documents analysed by the ASPI, workers are often assigned minders and have limited freedom of movement.

The factories were part of supply chains providing goods for 83 global brands, the report found, including Apple, Nike and Volkswagen among others.

China has come under mounting international scrutiny for its policies toward Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, where as many as 1.5 million people have been sent to re-education and internment camps. Beijing, which says these facilities are voluntary vocational training centres, has said in recent months that most “students” of such centres have “graduated” and returned to society.

The labourers are transferred as a part of a program known as “Xinjiang aid”. The ASPI used open-source public documents, satellite imagery, and media reports to identify 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces where the labourers were transferred.

The report further states that the labourers are kept in conditions which “strongly suggest forced labour”. They live in segregated dormitories and are required to study Mandarin, undergo ideological training, and are barred from observing religious practices.

These factories are a part of supply chain providing goods for 83 global brands, that include smartphone giant Apple, sports apparel Nike and Volkswagen among others.

The Uighurs are at present under a serious social re-engineering campaign by the communist government.

The report by ASPI has called China to allow multinational companies access to investigate any abusive or forced labour practices in factories.

“It is vital that, as these problems are addressed, Uighur labourers are not placed in positions of greater harm or, for example, involuntarily transferred back to Xinjiang, where their safety cannot necessarily be guaranteed,” it said.

As per reports, Beijing plans to translate all classic religious books and new editions will not contain any content that contradicts socialism and paragraphs deemed wrong by censors will be amended or re-translated.