China Defends Internment of Uighurs as an Effort to ‘Modernize’ the Persecuted Muslim Minority

(BEIJING) — China on Tuesday characterized its mass internment of Muslims as a push to bring into the "modern, civilized" world a destitute people who are easily led astray — a depiction that analysts said bore troubling colonial overtones.

The report is the ruling Communist Party's latest effort to defend its extrajudicial detention of Central Asian Muslim minorities against mounting criticism.