New Report: China’s Use of Boarding Schools as a Tool of Genocide Against Uyghur Muslims

CUS Press Release

For Immediate Release

May 13, 2025

Contact@Uyghurstudy.org

Uyghurstudy.org

Today, the Center for Uyghur Studies released its new report titled “Breaking the Roots: China’s Use of Boarding Schools as a Tool of Genocide Against Uyghur Muslims.” This report sheds light on one of the most alarming and underreported aspects of China’s repressive policies against the Uyghur people: the state-run boarding school system that targets Uyghur children in East Turkistan (AKA Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region). The report documents how these schools are being used not as centers of learning and development, but as tools of forced assimilation, designed to erase Uyghur identity, language, and culture from a young age.

For centuries, the Uyghurs have maintained a distinct cultural and ethnic identity. However, under Chinese Communist Party rule, their very existence is under threat through coordinated policies that include mass Han migration, internment camps, and now, the widespread use of coercive boarding schools.

The report provides an in-depth examination of how the boarding school system in the Uyghur homeland functions as a mechanism of cultural genocide:

1. Policy Origins – Tracing the roots of China’s assimilation campaign against the Uyghurs, including how “counter-terrorism” narratives have been used to justify oppressive policies post-9/11.
   
2. Implementation of Boarding Schools, detailing how children, some as young as primary school age, are forcibly separated from their families and placed into state-run facilities.
   
3. Educational Indoctrination, describing the curriculum and environment within these schools, where the Uyghur language is banned, familial ties are vilified, and loyalty to the state is indoctrinated.
   
4. Eyewitness Testimonies, presenting first-hand accounts from survivors of these schools, offering credible and emotional insight into the long-term psychological and cultural damage inflicted on Uyghur children.
   

Unlike typical boarding schools, Uyghur parents are often denied any contact or information about their children, many of whom are isolated due to their parents’ detention in internment camps. In these boarding schools, Children are systematically stripped of their heritage, language, and faith.

Experts and international legal scholars have identified this as a textbook case of cultural genocide, a deliberate effort to erase the identity of an ethnic group by targeting its youngest and most vulnerable members.

Executive Director Abdulhakim Idris said, “What is happening to Uyghur children in these so-called ‘boarding schools’ is not education, it is forced assimilation, cultural erasure, and psychological trauma. By severing children from their families, language, and identity, the Chinese government is committing a grave injustice that meets the definition of genocide. The international community cannot remain silent in the face of this systematic destruction of an entire people’s future.

The report concludes with an urgent call to action for the international community to stand in solidarity with the Uyghur people, recognize the severity of these crimes, and push for accountability and justice.

The full report is available to read and download.