The Xinjiang region of China is 6,000 kilometres from London, 10,000 kilometres from New York and a million miles from most westerners’ thoughts. But here, in a developed country, men, women and children are being persecuted, imprisoned or killed for their religious beliefs.

Local Uyghurs (Turkic Muslims) are being rounded up and sent to sprawling detention facilities (or “re-education” camps) by Han Chinese migrants who have moved to the resource-rich region and commenced the systematic oppression of the indigenous people.

In fact, less than one month ago, the London-based China Tribunal found that the Chinese government is harvesting organs from prisoners. Many of these prisoners have done nothing more than follow Islam or Falun Gong (a peaceful religion characterised by kindness and meditation which is nonetheless considered a threat to the communist regime).

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“Very many people have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC stated in relation to the unanimous decision of the China Tribunal. “More may suffer in similar ways and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, for the time being, running a country with one of the oldest civilisations known to modern man.”

It is now being reported that tourists entering Xinjiang are being told to download an application onto their phones, which further investigations have uncovered is malware designed to search for and extract information. The software looks for a specific set of files, according to numerous experts.

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"[The app] provides yet another source of evidence showing how pervasive mass surveillance is being carried out in Xinjiang. We already know that Xinjiang residents - particularly Turkic Muslims - are subjected to round-the-clock and multidimensional surveillance in the region," Maya Wang, China senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said. "What you’ve found goes beyond that: it suggests that even foreigners are subjected to such mass, and unlawful surveillance."

Uyghurs are a Turkic Muslim race who have lived in the region for centuries. However, the incoming Han Chinese (China’s and indeed the world’s largest ethnic group) control Xinjiang. Now, the government is monitoring Uyghurs who are also acutely aware of “disappearances” from the community.

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“This is yet another example of why the surveillance regime in Xinjiang is one of the most unlawful, pervasive, and draconian in the world," stated Edin Omanovic, Privacy International’s state surveillance programme lead. "Modern extraction systems take advantage of this to build a detailed but flawed picture into people’s lives.”

“Modern apps, platforms, and devices generate huge amounts of data which people likely aren’t even aware of or believe they’ve deleted, but which can still be found on the device” he adds. “This is highly alarming in a country where downloading the wrong app or news article could land you in a detention camp.”

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The software, called BXAQ or Fengcai, is installed on Android phones and looks for things such as ISIS’s publication Rumiyah, parts of the Quran, content relating to the Dalai Lama and music by Japanese rock band Unholy Grave, who offended the Chinese government with a song entitled Taiwan: Another China.

In a joint journalistic investigation, the Guardian, the New York Times and Vice employed researchers at Citizen Lab from the University of Toronto, researchers from the Ruhr University Bochum and penetration testing firm Cure53, on behalf of the Open Technology Fund.

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"The Chinese government, both in law and practice, often conflates peaceful religious activities with terrorism,” Maya Wang, of Human Rights Watch, added. "Chinese law defines terrorism and extremism in a very broad and vague manner. For example, terrorism charges can stem from mere possession of 'items that advocate terrorism,' even though there is no clear definition of what these materials may be."

As well as extreme surveillance, Uyghurs are also being abducted from their homes and sent to “vocational schools” which use education - on topics such as Chinese culture and values - to combat “terrorism and religious extremism”. These largescale complexes are being built at a rate of knots and, with multiple watchtowers per perimeter, look far more like prisons than schools.

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“There was a special room to punish those who didn't run fast enough,” former inmate Ablet Tursun Tohti told BBC. “There were two men there, one to beat with a belt, the other just to kick.” In an official video, it is claimed that Muslims are destitute people who are easily led astray but that these camps help assimilate them into the "modern, civilised" world. “We sang the song called 'Without the Communist Party There Can Be No New China',” Tohti explains. “And they taught us laws,” he adds. “If you couldn't recite them in the correct way, you'd be beaten.”

Meanwhile, the China Tribunal has uncovered a worst-case scenario in regards to organ harvesting - a practise the Chinese government claimed it had ceased in 2014. “On the day we were transferred to the labour camp, we were taken to a medical facility where we underwent physical check-ups,” Falun Gong activist Jennifer Zeng, who spent a year in a female labour camp, told the Guardian. “We were interrogated about what diseases we had and I told them I had hepatitis.”

“The second time, after about a month in the camp, everyone was handcuffed and put in a van and taken to a huge hospital,” Zeng continues. “That was for a more thorough physical check-up. We were given X-rays. On the third occasion in the camp, they were drawing blood from us. We were all told to line up in the corridor and the tests were given.”

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“Inmates of the labour camp were not allowed to exchange contact details, so there was no way to trace each other after we were released,” Zeng said during the tribunal. “When anyone disappeared from the camp, I would assume that she was released and had gone home.”

“But in reality that cannot be confirmed,” she adds, “as I had no way to trace others after my release and I now fear they might have been taken to a hospital and had their organs removed without consent and thus killed in the process.”

That tourists’ phones are being scanned by border control officials is a pinprick of inconvenience compared to the persecution suffered by Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The tip of the iceberg, it gives some idea of the extent to which the lives of Chinese Muslims are being ruined through racism. Another blight on China’s pockmarked human rights record, their standing on the international stage looks increasingly shaky. But world powers will need to apply more pressure before the situation changes.

China has long been known as a country whose governance borders on the tyrannical. Stories of corruption, police brutality and mass surveillance have made headlines recently. However, the Chinese government now stands accused of imprisoning a million Muslims in a state-sponsored brainwashing programme.

Furthermore, many of the newsworthy security measures - such as facial recognition cameras, collecting biometric data and intercepting text messages - have been deployed in this same province of Xinjiang. But most concerning are the “re-education” camps where Human Rights Watch have documented ill treatment and torture.

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With mounting pressure to explain what is happening, the government has launched a campaign that has dubbed the buildings “vocational schools” which combat “terrorism and religious extremism”. In a video, it is explained that they help Muslims - who are "destitute people" and "easily led astray" - into the "modern, civilized" world. However, a BBC investigation found them to be closer to prison camps than schools.

The inmates, supposedly there by choice, are conditioned into compliance having been stripped of headscarves or other religious items. They then receive education on language and culture - to help them integrate with the rest of the Chinese population. Around a million people have been arbitrarily detained in these mass internment camps, according to UN estimates.

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“There was a special room to punish those who didn't run fast enough,” former inmate Ablet Tursun Tohti told BBC. “There were two men there, one to beat with a belt, the other just to kick.” Tohti was at one of the dozens of facilities which have popped up over Xinjiang. On Google Earth, the data is often months out of date. But looking at the European Space Agency's Sentinel database, it’s clear that these sites are being constructed at a rate of knots.

“We sang the song called ‘Without the Communist Party There Can Be No New China,’” Tohti explains. His testimony, concerningly, matches up with that of others involved in the investigation. “And they taught us laws,” he adds. “If you couldn't recite them in the correct way, you'd be beaten.”

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Those in the surrounding towns and villages know of the facilities - and of the language which they need to use to speak about them. “It's a re-education school,” a local hotelier explained. “Yes, that's a re-education school,” a shopkeeper agreed. “There are tens of thousands of people there now. They have some problems with their thoughts.”

The programme targets Uighurs who speak a Turkic language and more closely resemble people from Central Asia rather than China's majority population - the Han Chinese. They make up around one half of the population in Xinjiang. However, 90 per cent of the Han Chinese live in the north of the province. In the south, the city of Kashgar is both physically and culturally closer to Baghdad than Beijing.

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However, this resource-rich region has seen huge Han Chinese migration and the persecuted Uighurs have, in many ways, not been in control of their fate. Tension has steadily risen and, as the Uighurs have seen this influx of unyielding and often openly racist arrivals, so too have there been a number of attacks.

In October 2013, for example, an attack in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square left two people dead. Thought to have been carried out by Uighurs, this felt like a symbolic stab at the heart of the Han Chinese’s homeland. The following year, an attack in Kunming, killed 31 people.

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Rather than consider culturally sensitive policies to help Uighurs integrate, the Chinese government banned headscarves and “abnormal” beards in both Beijing and across Xinjiang. However, in Xinjiang, religious names are now banned too.

Across the country, Uighur government officials are prohibited from practising Islam including attending mosques and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. The marginalisation of Muslims has created a separatist society and, visibly and audibly different, Uighurs make for an easy target.

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It’s thought that hundreds have gone to fight in various militias in Syria and the government is concerned about disloyalty among Uighurs. This is an issue, one must presume, which they hope to beat out of the culprits.

Open hostility towards Muslims has caused a sharp decline in those publically practising their faith. In many towns and cities, Mosques are largely empty. They are there more as a reminder of another culture rather than the centre of a community.

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Those who have moved out of Xinjiang have unusual insight into sudden disappearances. However, as to their relatives' whereabouts or whether they are coming back, there are no answers. “In the middle of the night, after my other children have gone to bed, I cry a lot,” says Bilkiz Hibibullah, whose husband and child disappeared from Xinjiang province. “There is nothing more miserable than not knowing where your daughter is, if she is alive or dead,” Hibibullah, who now lives in Turkey, explains. “If she could hear me now, I'd say nothing but sorry.”

In 2002, Reyila Abulaiti left Xinjiang in order to study in the UK. Her mother, Xiamuxinuer Pida, flew over to see her in London earlier this year, before returning on June 2. Reyila didn’t hear from her mother so called to check she had got back OK. “She told me that the police were searching the house,” Reyila explains.

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They wanted proof of Reyila’s UK address, her university course, a copy of her passport and a number of other documents. “Don't call me again,” her mother then said. “Don't call me ever.” Reyila believes that her mother has been held in one of the internment camps ever since. “My mum has been detained for no reason,” she says. “As far as I know, the Chinese government wants to delete Uighur identity from the world.”

By population, China is the largest country in the world. The government has attempted to keep the country united with a strong sense of nationalism. However, as the tentacles of communist control have spread from Bejing and taken resources from the south, so too have the Uighurs felt increasingly victimised. Ultimately, extremist attacks like those in Beijing and Kunming are as much an effect of hostile race relations as they are a cause.

Muslims in China detained in "re-education camps" have been forced to drink alcohol and eat pork, and have been made to perform other demeaning practices, a former detainee has alleged. Since spring 2017, authorities in the Xinjiang region have arrested thousands of Muslims, including foreign nationals, often without trial or charges. A United States commission has called it the “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today."

Omir Bekali, a Muslim man who originally hails from Kazakhstan, claims that, while in custody at one such re-education centre, he was subjected to a number of degrading punishments. Bekali was originally arrested by one of the Chinese government's security agencies on March 23, 2017. He had driven past the Chinese border from his home in Almaty for a work trip, before being detained for eight months without legal recourse.

Afterwards, he was allegedly subjected to a programme of intense cultural cleansing, designed to erase his Islamic beliefs and encourage devotion to the Chinese Communist Party. Bekali was forced to criticise his own spiritual values, as well as the people and things he most loved, in order to be rewarded with special privileges.

He was also forced to consume foods and drinks which were not halal. If he refused to conform and abide by the rules, he was cruelly punished with solitary confinement, beatings and starvation. Prisoners were not even allowed to regularly bathe, since the washing of the hands and feet remains an important Islamic ritual.

The re-education programs, which are designed to stamp out religious fundamentalism in China, mirror techniques employed by Chairman Mao's regime during the height of the Cultural Revolution in the 1950s. According to Bekali, detainees at the tightly-guarded compounds were made to stand before classmates and recite criticisms of Islam and of their history, before being criticised in turn by their peers. The people who refused to speak Mandarin, or to denounce the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, were punished, while those who dutifully recited government propaganda, or who actively abused their fellow internees, were awarded points and given special privileges.

In a recent interview, Bekali stated: "The psychological pressure is enormous, when you have to criticise yourself, denounce your thinking – your own ethnic group ... I still think about it every night, until the sun rises. I can’t sleep. The thoughts are with me all the time." Bekali became suicidal as a result of his experiences at the compound, but was eventually freed after he was visited by a number of Kazakh diplomats, including the deputy foreign minister.

A report from the Human Rights Watch claims that authorities in Xinjiang have increased mass surveillance across the region, and are persecuting Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. It states: 'These people are then at the mercy of a judicial system rife with abuse, including torture, that presents defendants only limited scope to contest the state’s accusations even for ordinary, non-political, crimes."

Thus far, Chinese officials in Xinjiang have refused to comment on the situation.

The wonders of modern technology are far too great to list. We're able to communicate with far-flung friends and family, fly across the globe in a matter of hours - and now, we can even create life outside of conventional means. Certainly, for those struggling with infertility, processes such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and surrogacy are life-changing.

Now, according to Chinese media, the son of a Chinese couple who died four years ago has been born to a surrogate mother.

Shen Jie and Liu Xi had been married for two years when they decided to undergo IVF. However, five days before one of the fertilised embryos was due to be transplanted into Liu, the couple passed away after a car accident in March 2013, in the coastal province of Jiangsu.

For the following three years, the parents of Shen and Liu have been fighting for the rights to the four frozen embryos left by their late children in a legal dispute that is both complex and unprecedented. After several court battles, both sets of grandparents won custody of the embryos.

As surrogacy is illegal in China, the two families enlisted the help of an underground surrogacy agency - and in January, they drove to Laos to find a suitable candidate.

Transporting the precious cargo proved to be one of many roadblocks. "First we thought of using air freight, but none of the airlines were willing to take the thermos-sized bottle of liquid nitrogen where the four embryos were stored," Liu Baojun, a surrogacy expert who assisted the families, told Beijing News.

But in December of last year, Shen and Liu's baby boy was born in a hospital in Guangzhou - a city northwest of Hong Kong. The child was kept in hospital for 15 days until all four grandparents had DNA tests and gave blood to establish that the baby was their grandson, and that both parents were Chinese nationals.

Liu's mother named him Tiantian, which translates to "sweet". And last month, the two families celebrated the child's first 100 days by holding a small party for him.

"Tiantian’s eyes look like my daughter’s but overall, he looks more like his father," Liu's mother, Hu Xinxian, told Beijing News.

The grandparents have not yet decided how they will tell Tiantian about his unconventional history. The child's paternal grandfather, Shen Xinan, revealed to Beijing News that until Tiantian is of age they will say that his parents live and work overseas.

"This boy is destined to be sad on his arrival into the world. Other babies have their fathers and mothers, but he doesn’t. We will definitely tell him in the future. How can we not?" Shen asserted.
This landmark ruling, which allowed parents to inherit frozen embryos created by their children, has since sparked an inflamed debate on social media in China.

In related news, a baby has been born from an embryo that was frozen for 24 years.

The world of science is at once awe-inspiring and...borderline horrifying. For all of the veritable Einstein's out in the world, there are thousands of us ordinary folk who can't understand why blood doesn't pour out of our mouths or how the human anatomy manages to come together. But luckily for people like us, there are professionals who can tend to all of our bodily mishaps. And apparently the fields of medicine and science, and the experts within it, are only becoming more ambitious. According to controversial Italian professor and neurosurgeon, Sergio Canavero, the world's first human head transplant has been carried out in China. Experts state that the experiment, which was conducted on a corpse during an 18-hour operation, demonstrated that it is possible to successfully reconnect the spine, blood vessels and nerves of a severed head. The complex procedure was carried out by a small team from the Harbin Medical University, and it was lead by Dr Xiaoping Ren, who last year managed to graft a head onto the body of a monkey. A full report of the operation and a timeframe for the live transplant are to be expected within the next few days. Canavero, who is also the director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, publicised the news at a press conference in Vienna this morning, where he stated that a very similar operation will take place "imminently" on a live human being. Speaking at the Press Conference, Canavero asserted:

"For too long nature has dictated her rules to us. We're born, we grow, we age and we die. For millions of years humans has evolved and 100 billion humans have died. That's genocide on a mass scale. We have entered an age where we will take our destiny back in our hands. 

It will change everything. It will change you at every level. The first human head transplant, in the human mode, has been realised. The paper will be released in a few days. Everyone said it was impossible, but the surgery was successful."

Professor Sergio Canavero first made his ambitious plans public 2015, and since then an alarming number of people have stepped forward to be his first patient. Russian computer scientist, Valery Spiridonov, who is severely handicapped, was perhaps the most famous candidate to announce his eagerness to undertake the controversial procedure. However, the 31-year-old's hopes have now been dashed. Canavero revealed at the press conference that the first transplant will be carried out on someone from China, and he also claimed that a large number of people have already volunteered to take on the risky surgery.

Well, putting aside all the comparisons to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I think we can all agree that if Sergio Canavero is able to pull this off, it would certainly be a big step forward for everyone involved in the medical community.

In related news, the "butterfly" boy who lost 80 per cent of his skin is allegedly being saved by scientists...