ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) - Hour upon hour, day upon day, Omir Bekali and other detainees in far western China's new indoctrination camps had to disavow their Islamic beliefs, criticize themselves and their loved ones and give thanks to the ruling Communist Party.

When Bekali, a Kazakh Muslim, refused to follow orders each day, he was forced to stand at a wall for five hours at a time. A week later, he was sent to solitary confinement, where he was deprived of food for 24 hours. After 20 days in the heavily guarded camp, he wanted to kill himself.

"The psychological pressure is enormous, when you have to criticize yourself, denounce your thinking - your own ethnic group," said Bekali, who broke down in tears bệnh viêm nhiễm phụ khoa và cách điều trị as he described the camp. "I still think about it every night, until the sun rises. I can't sleep. The thoughts are with me all the time."

In this March 29, 2018, photo, Omir cách chữa viêm ngứa phụ khoa Bekali cries as he details the psychological stress endured while in a Chinese internment camp during an interview in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Since 2016, Chinese authorities in the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang have ensnared tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese, and even foreign citizens, in mass internment camps. The program aims to rewire detainees' thinking and reshape their identities. Chinese officials say ideological changes are needed to fight Islamic extremism. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Since last spring, Chinese authorities in the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang have ensnared tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese - and even foreign citizens - in mass internment camps. This detention campaign has swept across Xinjiang, a territory half the area of India, leading to what a U.S. commission on China last month said is "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today."

Chinese officials have largely avoided comment on the camps, but some are quoted in state media as saying that ideological changes are needed to fight separatism and Islamic extremism. Radical Muslim Uighurs have killed hundreds in recent years, and China considers the region a threat to peace in a country where the majority is Han Chinese.

The internment program aims to rewire the political thinking of detainees, erase their Islamic beliefs and reshape their very identities.