We all expect governments to be a little evil. It comes with the territory -- often literally. But there's dubious policy, and then there's "Is this building up to the announcement of a giant death laser?" policy. These are terrifying examples of the latter.

5 China Made One Of Its Concentration Camp Prisoners Appear In A Video To Say That Everything Is Cool

China is responsible for countless human rights violations that are conveniently overlooked because they produce giant piles of consumer goods and movie tickets instead of the inept threats of neighboring North Korea, the country closest to a real-life Latveria. And perhaps chief among their many evils is their treatment of the Uyghurs.

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The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group with predominately Islamic religious beliefs, and China is home to around 11 million of them. Their loyalties are all considered suspect, because China's not big on "freedom of expression" or "showing interest in anything other than fawning servility to the state," and so approximately a million Uyghurs are currently interned in concentration camps. There they get to learn fun lessons like "Communism rules, Islam drools, and we'll torture you until you agree."

But what's China doing to bring some innovation to crimes against humanity? Well, one detainee is Abdurehim Heyit, who was a nationally acclaimed musician right up until he performed an Uyghur song with the phrase "martyrs of war" in it. The piece encourages people to respect their ancestors who suffered through the conflicts of the past, but to China it was proof that Heyit was a terrorist threat, which would be like the FBI throwing Taylor Swift in jail on the assumption that "Look What You Made Me Do" was foreshadowing a shooting spree.

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When rumors spread that Heyit had died in one of the camps, China found itself under serious diplomatic pressure. So they released a video in which Heyit explained that he was totally fine! He's alive, being treated well, is completely cool with being investigated for crimes against the state, and definitely isn't reading from a script. No, of course you can't see or talk to him, don't be absurd. He's very busy!

"You think he's blinking 'HELP' in Morse code? Don't be ridiculous. We would have edited that out."