BEIJING—China has retroactively changed the law to legitimize its detention of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs in a campaign that has sparked an international outcry over human rights abuses against the ethnic minority.
The amended counterterrorism regulations, adopted Tuesday in the northwest Xinjiang region where most Uighurs live, say that authorities can use “vocational skills training centers” to “deradicalize” people suspected of extremism. The previous rules made no reference to vocational centers.
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