Chinese authorities are reportedly stepping up their persecution of the Muslim Uighurs in the country’s Xinjiang province, barring them from fasting during Ramadan, detaining as many as one million Uighurs in so-called “re-education centers,” and targeting women in particular by cutting their long conservative dresses and skirts off their bodies in public.
Images posted to social media appeared to show police pulling over women as they walked in the street to cut their dresses to hip length. While the authenticity of these images has yet to be verified, Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, has said that the alleged dress-cutting campaign is part of a systematic approach from the Chinese government at eradicating the people’s traditional identity and forcing assimilation.
“Nowhere in the world does a government keep itself busy with cutting off women’s dresses below their waist. This is absolutely ridiculous,” he told Radio Free Asia. “The international community should not allow China to humiliate Uighur women in such a way.”
The Chinese government’s ban on long skirts and burqas in the region is just one example of a long list of alleged human rights abuses of the Uighur. An estimated 40,000 facial-recognition cameras are already reportedly being used to track the movement of Uighur people, with more cameras to be installed inside mosques to ensure that local imams don’t criticize the communist party line. Members of the ethnic minority are also being required to install surveillance apps on their phones, and to provide the government with DNA, fingerprints, and voice samples so that they can be more easily tracked and identified.
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