Internment camps are ‘legalised’ in China

China’s far-northwestern region of Xinjiang has revised legislation to provide a legal basis for internment camps where up to one million Muslims are being held amid mounting international criticism.

New clauses adopted by the regional government officially permit the use of “education and training centres” to reform “people influenced by extremism”.

Chinese authorities deny the internment camps exist, but say petty criminals are sent to vocational “training centres”. Former detainees in the centres say they were forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the Communist Party in what they describe as political indoctrination camps.

James Leibold, a scholar of Chinese ethnic policies at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, said: “It’s a retrospective justification for the mass detainment of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. It’s a new form of re-education that’s unprecedented... I see them scrambling to try to create a legal basis.”