Tulsi Gabbard's political career was secretly directed by her guru Chris Butler. Under the pen name Bo Zhongyan (
柏忠言
), Butler also coauthored anti-Western books in China with his wife Wai Lana (Zhang Huilan,
张蕙兰
). They described Westerners as
"no more than dogs"
and dedicated their 1986 book to
"the great and magnificent Chinese nation"
—
这个伟大，壮丽国家的全体中国人民.
Source
Thousands of documents and emails from the covert Science of Identity political operation have been independently examined by the Washington Post. The content on this website is attributed solely to the site's author.
The U.S. State Department calls it genocide. Since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party has detained an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in a network of internment camps in Xinjiang, where leaked files and survivor testimony document systematic torture and the forced erasure of Islamic faith.
First-person account
Chris Butler is Tulsi Gabbard's guru. The Chinese Communist Party imprisons and tortures Muslims, and Butler used Tulsi's political prominence to push a broad-brush anti-Muslim agenda of his own.
As a member of Congress, Gabbard built her national profile warning about "radical Islamic terrorism." In 2015 she was one of 47 Democrats to vote for the American SAFE Act, which would have halted the admission of Syrian and Iraqi refugees pending tighter vetting. She introduced a resolution urging the United States to prioritize Christians and Yezidis, rather than Muslims, for refugee status. And as Director of National Intelligence in 2025, she publicly defended a Trump travel ban affecting dozens of mostly Muslim-majority nations. 18
The anti-Muslim policy and language of Tulsi Gabbard and her guru are yet another eerie echo of the CCP regime, a regime Butler has had close ties to for decades. In other posts on this site, I document how Butler used Tulsi's national profile to push specific agendas, and how Butler, Sunil Khemaney, and Tulsi allied with leaders at the Hindu American Foundation to push anti-Muslim positions while providing political cover for Tulsi.
The Chinese government says these are voluntary vocational training centers. The leaked internal documents say something different. They say "never allow escapes." They say "increase discipline and punishment." They say "promote repentance and confession."
Amnesty International interviewed more than 50 former detainees. Every single one reported torture or other ill-treatment. Former detainees describe being forced to renounce their Islamic faith, criticize their own religious practices, and pledge loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. The conditions described include beatings, electric shocks, solitary confinement, and prolonged shackling. 1
Two major leaks of Chinese government documents, multiple international investigations, and survivor testimony have built a detailed picture of what is happening inside these camps. Here is what the evidence shows.
The scale of detention
Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, estimated in 2019 that up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have been detained in internment camps across Xinjiang since 2017. Earlier independent estimates by multiple researchers converged around one million. 2
The detainees are mostly Uyghurs but also include ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic Muslims, as well as some foreign citizens. According to Amnesty International, people were detained for conduct as ordinary as possessing a religious-themed image, praying regularly, communicating with someone abroad, or having traveled to a Muslim-majority country. 1
Researchers and human rights organizations, including the Council on Foreign Relations and Amnesty International, have described this as the largest-scale arbitrary detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. 3
1
Up to 1.8 million
Estimated people detained since 2017 (Zenz, 2019)
Largest since WWII
Scale of the arbitrary detention, per rights groups
What happens inside the camps
Forced renunciation of faith
According to Amnesty International's 2021 report, detainees are forced to disavow Islam, pledge loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, and criticize their own religious practices, including praying, fasting, wearing religious clothing, and growing beards. Detainees are required to study Mandarin and memorize Communist Party propaganda. Those who fail to demonstrate sufficient "transformation" face punishment. 1
Religious practices that Muslims widely consider essential, including daily prayer and attending mosques, are now effectively prohibited in the region. Children have been barred from receiving religious education, and parents have been barred from giving children Islamic-sounding names. 4
Torture and abuse
Amnesty International reported that every one of the more than 50 former detainees it interviewed described torture or other ill-treatment. Reported methods include beatings, electric shocks with batons, pepper spray, solitary confinement in dark and windowless rooms, prolonged shackling (in one case for an entire year), food and water deprivation, sleep deprivation, and forced immobilization in devices known as "tiger chairs." 1
An NBC News report on the Amnesty findings detailed additional testimony from former detainees describing overcrowded cells, inadequate food, no medical treatment, and deaths from disease and malnutrition. 5
Total control of daily life
Leaked Chinese government documents, known as the China Cables, revealed that every aspect of a detainee's life is regimented. According to the leaked instructions, detainees are assigned fixed bed positions, fixed queue positions, fixed classroom seats, and fixed work stations. It is "strictly forbidden" to change any of these. Rules govern every activity, from waking up and roll call to washing, eating, studying, and sleeping. 6
The documents instruct camp administrators to maintain "full video surveillance coverage of dormitories and classrooms free of blind spots." 6
The leaked documents
The China Cables (2019)
In November 2019, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published a cache of secret Chinese government documents obtained from an anonymous source. The ICIJ worked with 17 media partners including BBC Panorama and The Guardian. The documents include a nine-page memo sent in 2017 by Zhu Hailun, then Xinjiang's top CCP security official, to camp administrators. 6
The memo's instructions include: "Never allow escapes." "Increase discipline and punishment of behavioural violations." "Promote repentance and confession." "Make remedial Mandarin studies the top priority." "Encourage students to truly transform." 7
China's UK ambassador dismissed the documents as "fake news." 7
The Xinjiang Police Files (2022)
In May 2022, a second major leak emerged: more than 10 gigabytes of hacked data from police computer systems in Xinjiang's Ili and Kashgar regions. The files, obtained by researcher Adrian Zenz, included thousands of photographs of detained Uyghurs, classified government documents, and details on the internment of more than 20,000 individuals. 8
According to the BBC's reporting on the files, one document instructs camp armed police to fire a warning shot if a detainee attempts to escape, and to "shoot them dead" if they continue. The ICIJ described the leak as "irrefutable evidence of the highly militarized nature of the camps." 8
9
The files included more than 5,000 police photographs of Uyghurs taken between January and July 2018. The BBC verified the images by identifying detained individuals as missing relatives of Uyghurs living overseas. The youngest detainee photographed was 15 years old. The eldest was 73. 8
Separating children from families
BBC investigations found that Chinese authorities are systematically separating Muslim children from their families in Xinjiang and placing them in state-run boarding schools. In one township alone, more than 400 children had both parents either arrested or sent to internment camps. 10
Children in these boarding schools are penalized for failing to speak Mandarin and prevented from practicing their religion. Children of detained parents are classified as "orphans" by state authorities, even when their parents are alive, and placed in facilities where instruction is conducted almost exclusively in Mandarin. 10
In September 2023, UN human rights experts warned that China's forced separation of Uyghur children and its language policies "carry risk of forced assimilation" and may violate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. 11
International response
The UN assessment (2022)
On August 31, 2022, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released an assessment concluding that China's treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang constitutes "serious human rights violations." The report stated that the "extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention" of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups "may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity." 12
The assessment documented credible allegations of torture, sexual and gender-based violence, forced medical treatment, destruction of Islamic religious sites, mass surveillance, violations of reproductive rights including forced birth control, and coerced labor. 12
U.S. genocide declaration
In January 2021, the U.S. State Department formally declared that the Chinese government's actions against Uyghurs in Xinjiang constitute genocide and crimes against humanity. The determination was made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the final days of the Trump administration. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated at his confirmation hearing that he agreed with it. 13
In June 2020, Congress passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, signed into law by President Trump. The law requires U.S. agencies to report on the CCP's human rights abuses against Uyghurs and authorizes sanctions against the officials responsible. 14
Ongoing legislation (2025)
In 2025, the chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), introduced the Uyghur Genocide Accountability and Sanctions Act. The bill expands existing sanctions authorities, imposes mandatory visa bans, restricts U.S. government contracts linked to forced labor, and provides assistance to survivors of torture, forced sterilization, rape, and arbitrary detention. 15
The CCP's response
The Chinese government has consistently maintained that the camps are voluntary "vocational education and training centers" designed to combat extremism. Officials have stated that "graduates" have all "returned to society." China has called the leaked documents "fabrication and fake news" and accused Western governments and media of "slandering and smearing." 16
However, Amnesty International reported in 2025 that three years after the UN assessment, there has been no accountability for the documented abuses, and that former detainees continued to face restrictions after release. 17
An international consensus calls this genocide. It is the same regime Tulsi Gabbard's guru served, while he used her political career to push an anti-Muslim agenda of his own.
