Eradicating a "Mental Illness"

Uighurs coming out of Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang

 The Chinese government is spinning the incarceration of Uighurs in detention centres in Xinjiang,  saying their belief in Islam needs to be treated as a mental illness. As a result they need to be treated multiple times, not just once, and for months at a time.

That's the latest report from The Atlantic, that also says some one million people are being sent to these "reeducation camps" where they are forced to sing propaganda songs and learn Mandarin, and some media reports have even talked about forcing these ethnic minority Muslims to eat pork and drink alcohol.

While the authorities describe the camps are "schools", they are also being described as "hospitals".

Women waking down the street in Kashgar

In a WeChat message to Uighurs, an excerpt of an official Communist Party audio recording says:

Members of the public who have been chosen for reeducation have been infected by an ideological illness. They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient... The religious extremist ideology is a type of poisonous medicine, which confuses the mind of the people... If we do not eradicate religious extremism at its roots, the violent terrorist incidents will grow and spread all over like an incurable malignant tumour.

Sounds serious doesn't it? Except the message is making assumptions about people's devotion to their religion.

By calling religious extremism an "ideological illness", it gives the government (in its mind) the moral authority to lock people up for months at a time, and as many as it warrants is necessary.

Police officers have confirmed to Radio Free Asia that they have been ordered to meet specific population quotas in rounding up people for these camps. In one township, 40 percent of the local population was locked up.

"It's being treated as a mental illness that's never guaranteed to be completely cured, like addiction or depression," says Timothy Grose, a China expert at the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology. "There's something mentally wrong that needs to be diagnosed, treated -- and followed up with."

The above mentioned recording from the Communist Party justifies the need for continual treatment:

There is always a risk that the illness will manifest itself at any moment, which would cause serious harm to the public. that is why they must be admitted to a reeducation hospital in time to treat and cleanse the virus from their brain and restore their normal mind... Being infected by religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology and not seeking treatment is like being infected by a disease that has not been treated in time, or like taking toxic drugs... There is no guarantee that it will not trigger and affect you in the future.

There are intimidating police patrols around Xinjiang

Having gone through reeducation and recovered form the ideological disease doesn't mean that one is permanently cured... So, after completing the reeducation process in the hospital and returning home... they must remain vigilant, empower themselves with the correct knowledge, strengthen their ideological studies, and actively attend various public activities to bolster their immune system.

Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology in Germany equates what is going on in Xinjiang with how the government dealt with Falun Gong practitioners in the early 2000s by reeducating them in labour camps.

"Falun Gong was also treated like a dangerous addiction... But in Xinjiang this [rhetoric] is certainly being pushed to the next level," he says. "The explicit link with the addictive effect of religion is being emphasized possibly in an unprecedented way."

US-based Uighur academic from Xinjiang Tahir Imin isn't surprised by the government equating Islam with mental illness. He believes this is the authorities' way of eradicating ethnic Muslim minorities and forcing them to assimilate with the Han Chinese.

In the end this is the government's way of dealing with extremists -- by eradicating what it thinks is religious extremism through extreme power.