Religious persecution has been going on for a long time. When I was a teacher at Kashgar University in the 1980s, we were not allowed to fast. That was the common practice by the Chinese government. If you work for the government, or a government institute or public sector, you are not allowed to fast; you are not allowed to pray. That has been a common policy for a long time, because the Chinese Communist Party is atheist. They identify themselves as the atheist party.
The most important people are the ordinary students. Before, there were restrictions for the people under the age of 18, and the government officials and the retired government officials, but now an entire religion is criminalized.
Yesterday I heard Radio Free Asia interviewing the local people. Basically, now the government has distributed one simple page of questions: Do you separate halal food from haram food? If the answer is yes, that is a 15-year sentence.
I guess foreign affairs has identified 48 elements that directly send you to a concentration camp. Among those 48 elements are that if you have a beard, if you have a praying mat at home, if you keep Quran, or if you have anything on your cellphone, just God bless. You end up in a concentration camp.