Compulsory boarding school for Uyghur children

According to the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), with reference to various media reports, all kindergartens in Qaraqash district of the Hotan region of Xinjiang (East Turkestan) are soon to be converted into state boarding schools by order of the Chinese authorities. The plan provides that Uyghur parents will have to bring their children to school on Monday morning and will not be allowed to pick them up again until Saturday. "The Chinese government is trying everything it can to separate Uyghur children from their families," explained Hanno Schedler, STP expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. "The boarding schools are supposed to alienate them from the Uyghur traditions, the Uyghur language, and their religion. This forced separation is a further step in the Chinese government's plans to culturally annihilate the Uyghur people."

It is not yet clear whether the order applies to the entire province of Xinjiang. However, it is part of a series of measures that show a clear direction: "China's government wants to forcibly assimilate the Muslim nationalities in the region. More than 1.5 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz Muslims have been arbitrarily locked up in re-education camps over the past three years," Schedler stated. There, they are brainwashed to become supporters of the Communist Party and President Xi Jinping.

"Meanwhile, the Chinese government has established a comprehensive system of forced labor: Many former prisoners have to work in factories for little money after they are released from the camps," Schedler criticized. "A system of total social control has been established, and it becomes even more perfidious when families are separated." If four-year-old Uyghur children are separated from their parents for six days a week, they will almost inevitably be traumatized.

Nearly 500,000 school-age children of Muslim nationalities have already been separated from their parents and forcibly sent to boarding schools. The Chinese government is planning to expand the boarding school system.