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“The Chinese government’s destruction of cultural heritage aims to erase, replace and rewrite what it means to be Uyghur,”

China’s Foreign Ministry on Friday repeated its claims that Xinjiang has around 24,000 mosques and that the number of them per capita among Muslims in Xinjiang is higher than in many Muslim countries. It said that China fully protects the human and religious rights of all ethnic minorities and described the ASPI report as “smear and rumor.” It denied the existence of detention camps in Xinjiang.

ASPI estimated that around half of important Islamic sacred sites—many of which are supposed to be protected under Chinese law—have been damaged or altered since 2017.

The report estimated there are fewer than 15,500 mosques left intact in Xinjiang, the lowest number since the 1980s, when Uighurs had just begun rebuilding mosques destroyed during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Most of the land where mosques were razed remained vacant, it said.

The campaign is part of a longer-term trend to transform communities in the name of public safety. The strategy has gained pace under President Xi Jinping who has called for the “Sinicization” of religion

During a visit the following month, the Journal found that some facilities had indeed been closed, with former detainees sometimes sent away to work in factories. One facility had been converted into a prison after being previously described as a school.

Of the dozens of facilities ASPI identified as recently under construction, roughly half were higher-security facilities. The most-secure facilities had high walls, multiple layers of perimeter barriers, watchtowers and dozens of cell blocks with no apparent outside exercise yard for detainees

Authorities are likely singling out people who they have lost hope of re-educating and putting them into long periods of incarceration, said Mr. Leibold. It is “the only way to really explain their pretty remarkable expansion,”

One challenge in pressuring China’s government over its Xinjiang policies is the relative silence of Muslim-majority countries. ASPI made its work available in 10 different languages to try to raise awareness beyond the English-speaking world