Reports of Muslims being tortured and assaulted in China are hitting the news but it seems the world can do little about it.

UN experts and activists have claimed that ‘widespread human rights abuse against Muslims’ is taking place in the western province of Xinjiang. Reportedly over a million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minority group members have been detained in camps, blindfolded and shackled.

The country itself has described the camps as ‘vocational training centers to help stamp out religious extremism and terrorism by teaching new work skills’.

38-year old Gulzira Mogdyn was reportedly detained for having WhatsApp on her phone (the app is banned in China). When the authorities found that she was pregnant, she was told that she could not have a fourth child and according to reports her fetus was cut out, without the use of anesthetic.

The Sun

Several female former detainees have reportedly said they suspect, when younger and unmarried women were taken from packed cells at night, they were raped – and many disappeared altogether.

Ruqiye Perhat, 30, a Uighur Islamic studies student claims that she was repeatedly raped by Han Chinese guards, and that led to two pregnancies. “Any woman or man under age 35 was raped and sexually abused,” The Sun quotes Perhat as saying.

Another 40-year-old Kazakh woman who was in camps for 18 months reportedly said, “They’d come in and put bags on the heads of the ones they wanted.”

Reuters

Gulzira Auelkhan said the female guards in the camps used chewing gum to pull her pubic hair out and the inmates were filmed while in the shower.

Not only is China carrying out brutality against minority ethnic groups in the ‘reeducation camps’, there is satellite proof that it is trying to erase marks of Muslim identity and existence altogether.

China is destroying burial grounds where, ‘generations of Uighur families have been laid to rest, leaving behind human bones and broken tombs in what activists call an effort to eradicate the ethnic group's identity in Xinjiang’.

AFP

Satellite images show that dozens of cemeteries have been destroyed in just the last couple of years and the graveyards are being turned into playgrounds or car parks.

AFP

China's attitude towards prisoners of conscience is known all too well. Just a few months ago, a study carried out by an independent tribunal, talking about the illegal organ trade, came out. However, it seemed to create little outrage around the world.

Even now, as Muslims are being tortured, assaulted and raped, and their identities threatened, the world is not talking about it enough and it is high time it does.