China has issued a strident defense of its Muslim “re-education camps” in the face of growing international condemnation, with a top official claiming everyone held there has now “graduated” and is happy.
Uighur Muslims and ethnic Kazakhs who had been detained and made to study Mandarin, law, vocational skills and de-radicalization at the indoctrination camps had found “stable employment and improved the quality of their life” with the help of the government, insisted ​Xinjiang state governor Shohrat Zakir​, himself a Uighur, on Monday.
Nonetheless, he suggested the Communist Party would continue its re-education efforts, and did not say whether those deemed graduates were now free to resume ordinary lives. Groups such as village officials, farmers and unemployed high school graduates would still be enrolled in programs that allow them to “come and go freely”, Mr. Zakir said, calling those courses “daily, routine, normal, and open educational training”.