It is evident in official documents, e.g. the above mentioned surveillance workers’ guideline, that the regime’s mass internment drive has pathologized Uyghur religiosity. According to one Chinese government document, anyone infected with an ideological “virus” must be promptly admitted to transformation-through-education centers, i.e. ideological “hospital”, before illness arises. If you so happen to worry about the cost of all this, the government has got you covered, for this is a gratuitous residential treatment offer. The official discourse is fraught with the language of pathology, which “taps into a long history of what anthropologist Stevan Harrell called China’s ‘civilizing project’, treating people on China’s geographic and cultural periphery as inferior and therefore deserving of the colonial predation visited upon them” (Grose 2019). In the surveillance workers’ guideline, the regime’s salvation discourse is blatantly present: “The Communist Party and the government took preventative measures to save him, his family, and his family members so that he wouldn’t embark on a path of self destruction, hurt his family, or harm society; what part of all this do the family members not understand? Should be grateful to the party, right?” (党和政府为了不使其走上毁灭的道路、避免伤害家庭、危害社会，挽救了 他、挽救了他的家庭，家属还有什么想 不通的呢?是不是应该感谢党?).
Source: “The persecution of Uyghurs in East Turkistan” Authors: Erkin Kâinat; Adrian Zenz; Adiljan Abdurihim
Link: https://www.utjd.org/register/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/the_persecution_of_uyghurs_hard_copy.pdf
