On the enforced confessions in the camps: I think of it as an “identity conversion therapy”: Detainees are forced to reject their ethnic and cultural identity and stop speaking their native language, on pain of extra punishment. They are forced to find fault in themselves, and reject themselves, including especially their personal everyday faith, by way of interpreting the “faults” (= doing things like eating halal food) as would-be extremism. The procedure could be called “anti-religious,” rather than religious – but then detainees are also forced to endlessly chant Xi Jinping’s words, which also could be seen as a kind of religious worship.
It is of course the Chinese regime that is extremist here. As regards the violence, I think there is a spiral of violence involved, begetting more and more violence and cruelty. There is nothing blocking violence from festering and escalating, when the leader’s permit it, encourage it, and, cover it up. I wrote about this aspect here: http://theasiadialogue.com/2018/10/24/the-xinjiang-camps-as-a-stanford-prison-experiment/
The whole thing is a massive crime, a racist mass collective punishment of innocent millions, all illegal under international law. It is also a turning point in modern Chinese history, a mass trauma that in the future it will require a long time for the victims — and also for China the nation — to recover from.
More testimonies of the atrocities keep coming in: Today, read the testimony of Tursenai Zyadon, an Uyghur woman from Kunes county, Ili prefecture, Xinjiang, who like Sayragul Sauytbay escaped to Kazakhstan:
English summary translation: https://twitter.com/Uyghurspeaker/status/1184961951228715016
Chinese text: https://atajurt.blogspot.com/2019/10/tursenaizyadon.html
I’ve collected many similar testimonies and reports here: https://uhrp.org/featured-articles/chinas-re-education-concentration-camps-xinjiang
ps. Also published today, in the series Uyghur Talk by Halmurat Uyghur:
An interview with me about why we should call the mass atrocities a genocide; why the Chinese regime is doing it; what can be done, and more:
Uyghur Talk (8) interview with Dr. Magnus Fiskesjö from Cornell University of the USA. Full video: https://youtu.be/2SZIMUekW3A
Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>