Recent genocides.
The definition of genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group to destroy that nation or group. Now that we know what it means- even though of course you do it’s just some people don’t, I can talk about how and where it still happens in the world. The most well-known genocide to ever exist is the holocaust. The conditions here were hideous and 1.7 million Jews were killed as this genocide was directed towards the Jewish religion. After the holocaust happened people said, ‘never again.’ We learn about the holocaust in history so much today to stop mass killings happening in the future generations, yet as you’re about to read genocide still happens today- yet the news doesn’t cover it as much so not as many people know.
Genocide is still happening all around the world. An example of this is what is happening in China to the Uighurs. I only found out about this genocide through Instagram, which seems so strange to me as I haven’t seen it once on the news. The world has a cruel habit of ignoring humanitarian disasters until it’s too late. This genocide is the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II.
China is holding two million Uighurs Muslims in concentration camps. They are only being held because of their religious belief. China is a communist country where religious beliefs are forbidden. One of the Uighurs Muslims talked about her experience when going through the camps as a former detainee. She said she was tortured many times by electric shocks in a special room, bands were placed on her arms and legs to make sure she couldn’t move, they put a helmet on her shaved head. A translator translated that she could feel the pain in her veins and that she would rather die than go through the torture, she begged them to kill her. The fact that I had no idea about any of this happening before I saw this on social media angers me greatly as people could most likely do something about this if they stood as one against the evil people that controls these camps, yet people are either too afraid to say anything or they simply just didn’t even know it was happening. The women then talk about their breakfast being very little rice which reminds me greatly of the Holocaust as we know that they had the same breakfast, barely enough to live off. After breakfast, the Muslims were forced to sing songs hailing the Communist Party, if this isn’t hideous enough they were then forced to repeat in Chinese ‘Long live Xi Jinping’ (he’s the Chinese president that put them into this situation) and ‘Lenience for those who repent and a punishment for those who resist.’
The Muslims in the camps were forced to drink alcohol and eat pork which completely goes against their religion yet they had no way of stopping it. In the concentration camps in China, detainees are abused, raped, tortured and killed which again sounds very similar to me what happened with the Holocaust. Even if you survived all of these traumatic things, there was still more to come. Those who did survive are ‘subjected to electric shock torture as we found out from the story above, waterboarding, repeated beatings, stress positions, injections of unknown substances,’ and other atrocities. The Chinese government is doing all of this by creating open-air prisons in East Turkistan, outside of the other camps. Facial recognition software, security checkpoints, homestays and surveillance apps are now a part of their everyday life in the camp. It’s like a modern-day holocaust with all of the technology they use so as few people as possible know about what’s going on there. The final thing that reminds me of the holocaust from this genocide- which is still taking place there, is that families are being broken up. Being sent to state-sponsored orphanages where they are being brainwashed. Within the walls of these orphanages, children between the ages of six months and 12 years are locked up like farm animals.
In conclusion, genocide still happens all over the world today and it’s just so sad to see. You would’ve thought that after what happened with the holocaust people would stick to the promise of ‘never again’ but there is always going to be evil in the world. I think it’s important that more people know about the genocides that are happening at the moment as well as educating themselves on the ones in the past. The fact that this genocide only happened last year and is still going on right now as a type of this, makes me extremely upset. It feels as though no one has done anything to help the Muslims but someone must’ve done something- no matter how many evil beings are in one situation there will always be someone good.