China’s “anti-halal” campaign and its wider efforts to coerce Uighur, Kazakh and Hui Muslims from practising their religion are well hidden. Journalists who make it in are tracked and intimidated to leave and if they do bravely remain, China’s state-of-the-art surveillance system makes it nearly impossible to travel to the locked down provinces without their every movement recorded and monitored.

Some have been courageous and have acquired photographs that documents the campaign. They show mosques surrounded by razor wire and courtyards populated only by a Chinese flag in addition to restaurants with ‘halal’ signs ripped off their facades.

China has doubled down on its program to surveil Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims, as well as Christians, sending as many as three million to detention and “re-education” centres that are more accurately described as concentration camps.

Amid growing international scrutiny into its crackdown, the Chinese Community Party (CCP) has retroactively legalised its surveillance and detention programs, effectively clearing the way for them to expand rapidly in size and scope.

Despite the awareness of the persecution of Uighurs rapidly growing around the world there still remains to be little pressure on governments to speak up and take action against the Chinese authorities.

China has become a key trading hub on a global scale, which is part of the heartbreaking reason why silence is prevailing over injustice but for how long can countries around the world continue to remain silent?

ANNISA ESSACK