Beijing’s response has been to incarcerate huge numbers of Uighurs in ‘re-education camps’. How many people are being held is known only to the Chinese authorities, but estimates range from 150,000 to 1 million. It is alleged that inmates are banned from praying or growing beards as part of a policy designed to strip the Uighurs of their religious beliefs. In April 2019 China denied the allegations, called the camps ‘boarding schools’ and said it had arrested about 13,000 terrorists and ‘broken up hundreds of terrorist gangs’.
