• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS GLOBAL
    • TESTIMONIES GLOBAL
    • OP-EDS GLOBAL
    • FEATURED GLOBAL
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
    • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / China / Op-eds China

China Is Deprogramming One Million “Religious Extremists”

06/08/2018Massimo Introvigne |

Massimo Introvigne

Transformatio through education
Propaganda advertising the benefits of “transformation through education” in Xinjiang. Source: Adrian Zenz

On May 24, 2018, a heated confrontation took place at the United Nations in New York. The United States and Germany accused China of keeping hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uyghurs in “re-education camps.” The Chinese representative answered that typically, Western governments and diplomats accept at face value fake news spread by anti-Chinese Muslim activists or “terrorists,” and in fact, these camps were officially abolished long ago. Was the Chinese representative simply lying? Yes and no.

It is very important to distinguish between three different kinds of re-education camps in China. The distinction has been studied in a recent (May 15, 2018) article by German scholar Adrian Zenz on camps in Xinjiang. The article is important, as Zenz has worked mostly on unimpeachable Chinese official sources to document the existence of various re-education camps. I follow Zenz’s study for the typology of camps, while I add comments of my own on how the camps operate, and on the ideology sustaining them, outside of Xinjiang.

The first camps described by Zenz are the so called laogai, in fact laodong gaizao (劳动改造), “reform through labor” camps. Inmates are sentenced to a time in a laogai by a court of law after a criminal trial, and laogai are part of the Chinese prison system.

The second kind of camps is called laojiao (劳动教养 or 劳教), “re-education through labor” camps, instituted by the Chinese regime in 1957. Laogai and laojiao may seem similar institutions, but there was an important legal difference. No judicial decision was needed to send somebody to a laojiao. An administrative order by a security agency was enough. The laojiao system was widely used for dissidents, devotees of banned religions, and real or suspected “counter-revolutionaries.” This system was, in fact, abolished in 2013, with some of the camps converted into coercive facilities for rehabilitating drug addicts.

When, during the United Nations debate, China objected that “re-education camps” no longer existed, it referred to the laojiao. The laogai are, of course, alive and well, but China can argue that there are similar labor facilities for those sentenced to jail terms in many countries.

Conveniently, however, the Chinese representative “forgot” the existence in China of the third kind of re-education camp. They are part of the jiaoyu zhuanhua (教育转化) system, normally translated as “transformation through education,” although zhuanhua, in fact, means “conversion.” These camps became an immense network and are creating what Zenz calls “the most intense campaign of coercive social reengineering [in China] since the end of the Cultural Revolution.” Indeed, what is happening is unprecedented. While the laojiao system, Zenz notes, hosted at its peak some 180,000 inmates, credible reports place those interned in the jiaoyu zhuanhua camps near the figure of one million in Xinjiang only. Zenz, however, has studied only Xinjiang and Uyghurs, but he concludes the article by warning that similar processes are going on and targeting other minorities in other parts of China as well. Since the system is extra-judicial, it is not connected with the special laws applicable in Xinjiang. The actual figure, thus, may well be higher than one million.

The gentle name “transformation through education” is misleading. These camps are not schools. Inmates are supposed to work, in addition, to be continuously indoctrinated, and “education” may be brutal. Zenz reports that “several detainees have died, and others have suffered mental breakdowns as a result of the apparently inhumane conditions in these centers.”

Zenz is also surprised that some laojiao, transformed into centers for drug addicts after 2013, have now been reconverted into parts of the jiaoyu zhuanhua system. In fact, he reports, “religious extremism” is increasingly presented as a “disease,” a “sick thinking” that should be “cured.”

Zenz may be unaware, however, of the connection between the Chinese repression of religious minorities and deprogramming. China bans a number of “cults” it labels as xie jiao (“heterodox teachings.”) It has sought legitimation of its persecution of the xie jiao from Western enemies of “cults.” When I was myself invited to China in 2017 to seminars organized by the Chinese Anti-Xie-Jiao Association, which has direct ties with the Chinese Communist Party, I learned that Western deprogrammers had been invited to China, including some with a heavy criminal record. Deprogramming was a practice popular in the West from the late 1960s to the 1980s when it was declared illegal by courts of law, including the kidnapping of adult members of new religious movements by muscular “deprogrammers,” usually hired by the devotees’ parents. Deprogrammers then imprisoned the “cult” members and bombarded them with negative information about their “cults,” often accompanied by systematic verbal abuse, food and sleep deprivation, and physical violence.

Deprogramming disappeared in the West with the 21st century, although some deprogrammers still hide their old practices under new names. But now it seems that China is undertaking the most massive operation of deprogramming in human history. Because deprogramming, in its most violent version, is what goes on in the jiaoyu zhuanhua system. Uyghur Muslims are the victims studied by Zenz but, as he noted, the system was created for Falun Gong before it was applied to Muslims, and in Xinjiang Christians are now also sent to the same camps. In other parts of China, the jiaoyu zhuanhua system is increasingly at work, and members of xie jiao are also targeted, with The Church of Almighty God being labeled by the regime as the first and most dangerous xie jiao currently operating in the country.

As for the notion of “religious extremism,” it has been imported from Russia, where it has been used to “liquidate” the Muslim lay organization Tablighi Jamaat and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and prepare the “liquidation” of others. The father of the Russian notion of “religious extremism,” Alexander Dvorkin, has been repeatedly invited to China and hailed as a “prominent sectologist.” The Russian-style notion of “religious extremism” has also served the Chinese to justify the repression of Muslim Uyghurs under the label of the “war on terrorism,” although, as Zenz notes, it is now abundantly clear that the so-called “war on terrorism” is, in fact, a “war on religion.”

And perhaps it will not stop with Muslim Uyghurs and xie jiao. “While detainees are supposedly taught to distinguish illegal religious activities from ‘normal’ cultural customs”, Zenz concludes “some reports and informants note that they are in fact forced to recant any religious beliefs.” Religion is increasingly perceived as a disease, and deprogramming is the cure, for one million or more peaceful Chinese citizens.

Tagged With: Muslim Uyghurs, Re-Education Camps, United Nations, Xie Jiao Organizations

Massimo Introvigne
Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio.  From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.

www.cesnur.org/

Related articles

  • Abduxaliq Uyghur, 1901–1933: Uyghurs Remember Their Beheaded Poet

    Abduxaliq Uyghur, 1901–1933: Uyghurs Remember Their Beheaded Poet

  • More Uyghur Criticism of Donnie Yen: Wasn’t He More Guilty than Will Smith?

    More Uyghur Criticism of Donnie Yen: Wasn’t He More Guilty than Will Smith?

  • Thailand and Pakistan: No Friends of Uyghur Refugees

    Thailand and Pakistan: No Friends of Uyghur Refugees

  • Innocents Abroad: The World Muslim Communities Council Hails Xinjiang as a Religious Liberty Paradise

    Innocents Abroad: The World Muslim Communities Council Hails Xinjiang as a Religious Liberty Paradise

Keep Reading

  • UN: Pakistan Should Halt Forced Conversions, Marriages of Christian and Hindu Girls
    UN: Pakistan Should Halt Forced Conversions, Marriages of Christian and Hindu Girls

    Six Special Rapporteurs wrote to the government of Pakistan. They have now decided to publish their letter.

  • A Uyghur Poet Reminds Us that Uyghurs Are Seeking Justice from the World
    A Uyghur Poet Reminds Us that Uyghurs Are Seeking Justice from the World

    After the Urumqi fire, it is time for the international community to stop the genocide. Perhaps a poem may help.

  • “Today I Received Uyghur Girls”: Uyghur Teenagers as Victims of Human Trafficking
    “Today I Received Uyghur Girls”: Uyghur Teenagers as Victims of Human Trafficking

    “Labor transfer agents” in Mainland China boast on social media that new shipments of Uyghur young women have arrived, as if they were just another commercial good.

  • The Urumqi Fire Was State Terror: The European Parliament Got It Right
    The Urumqi Fire Was State Terror: The European Parliament Got It Right

    For once, the European institution was brave enough to speak out while others had remained silent.

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • Cultural Genocide: The Indoctrination of Uyghur Children by Gulfiye Y
  • Wenzhou, Parents Asked to Sign a “Kindergarten Family Commitment Not to Believe in Religion” by He Yuyan
  • Why “Cults” (and “Brainwashing”) Do Not Exist by Massimo Introvigne
  • Pakistan: Ahmadi Mosque Vandalized by Police During Ramadan by Marco Respinti
  • A Uyghur View: Putin Got His Arrest Warrant—Xi Jinping Should Be Next by Kok Bayraq
  • Thailand and Pakistan: No Friends of Uyghur Refugees by Marco Respinti
  • “Do Not Dissolve the Unification Church!” 1. An Award-Winning Journalist Speaks Out by Masumi Fukuda

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY