The Chinese government has denied it has re-education camps in Xinjiang, describing them as voluntary 'vocational training centers.'
In a white paper released Sunday, the Chinese State Council Information Office painted Xinjiang as a religiously diverse community where a number of faiths had co-existed for centuries.
"The Uyghur conversion to Islam was not a voluntary choice made by the common people, but a result of religious wars and imposition by the ruling class," the report said.China is officially an atheist country, although around 18% of the country's citizens identify as Buddhist, 5% Christians and under 2% Muslim, according to the CIA Factbook.
Beijing has had a long and fractious history with Xinjiang, a massive, nominally autonomous region in the far west of the country that is home to a relatively small population of around 22 million in a nation of 1.4 billion people. Uyghurs have likened China's campaign against their people to a form of"cultural genocide," with former camp detainees describing forced lessons in Communist Party propaganda and region-wide bans on Uyghur culture and traditions.
Beijing has fiercely defended the centers as an important part of a program to combat Islamic radicalization, which the white paper said had risen worldwide after the Cold War, before spreading to Xinjiang.
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