Hong Kong’s crowded prisons are using methods honed in Uyghur re-education camps to “deradicalise” teenagers and instil loyalty to China. Former inmates who spoke to the WaPo describe hours spent watching propaganda films, goose-step marching drills, and psychological counselling in which they are forced to “confess” to being extremists. The objective, according to one former prison guard, is to create a feeling of hopelessness, deterring the young from activism or even seeing a future living in Hong Kong. Authorities and local Chinese think tanks have co-opted the language of “deradicalisation” ever since pro-democracy protests in 2019, and are attempting to “engineer” a sense of being in a minority by comparing protestors to drug addicts and far-right terrorists in Norway and New Zealand. The Hong Kong Correctional Services Department said that 871 young people had been through the programme since it started last year. Some were as young as 14.
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