Special to CosmicTribune.com, June 1, 2026

The communist regime headed up by Xi Jinping insists that the internment camps where ethnic Uyghurs are imprisoned, tortured, and forced to become communists no longer exist.

A new report by the Financial Times, however, finds otherwise.

“Xinjiang now has the world’s highest prison detention capacity relative to population, with forced labor, surveillance, family separation, and cultural erasure continuing under a new phase of repression,” the report said.

The Chinese Communist Party’s brutality against the Uyghur people did not end. It evolved, the report said.

While China keeps a tight lid on what news gets out of the nation, occasionally an account of just what is happening escapes the censors.

One account in the Financial Times report is that of Uyghur entrepreneur Ekpar Asat, who was detained in 2016 on charges of “inciting ethnic hatred” after returning from a leadership program in the United States.

When his parents were finally allowed to see him in prison in August 2024, it was their first in-person meeting since his disappearance years earlier.

According to his sister Rayhan Asat, he had become “unrecognizable.” The meeting lasted just 10 minutes and was conducted through a glass barrier. The family was forced to speak Mandarin Chinese rather than Uyghur and were instructed not to show emotion.

“Prisoners have to be always happy,” Rayhan told the Financial Times.

Though some of the re-education camps were closed, many of the more than 500 in the Xinjiang region remain open. The detention capacity is more than 600,000, human rights researchers estimate.

The communist regime’s intent to erase Uyghur culture starts in early development. Xinjiang’s Uyghur children are taught almost exclusively in Mandarin. Books in the Uyghur language have been removed from schools and libraries.

“There used to be 10 different Uyghur-language publishers, but they have gone,” said anthropologist Rune Steenberg.

The United States declared in 2021 that China’s actions amounted to “genocide”, while a UN report later said the abuses could constitute crimes against humanity.

  Chinese Communist Party’s blackout of Xinjiang news hides truth about Uyghurs’ plight