The Chinese government has detained more than one million individuals in internment camps in Xinjiang since April 2017,” said Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan
Tohti, a former professor at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, was sentenced to life in prison following his conviction on a charge of “separatism” by the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) on Sept. 23, 2014
Jewher Ilham, the daughter of jailed Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti, is a graduate from Indiana University who has spoken out in support of his peaceful promotion of equal rights and greater autonomy for the Turkic speaking Uyghur ethnic group in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)
China presented the two top ethnic Uyghur officials in the XUAR at a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday to deliver a surprising claim that the vast majority of Uyghurs had completed training in re-education camps and rejoined their families
Ebeydulla is one of many Uyghur professionals and intellectuals who have been identified as detainees in XUAR internment camps, and who defy claims by authorities that those held in the facilities are in need of “vocational training.”
Nearly two dozen countries at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council in Geneva have urged China to end mass arbitrary detentions, as well as widespread surveillance and restrictions, on Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)
Some 200 people died and 1,700 were injured in the three-day rampage of violence that began on July 5, 2009 in Urumqi between ethnic minority Uyghurs and Han Chinese, according to China’s official figures, although Uyghur rights groups say the numbers are much higher
Rights groups say detainees in the camps face death, torture and various abuses such as being forced to renounce Islam and consume pork and alcohol. The groups repeatedly criticize the international community for not doing enough to hold Chinese authorities accountable.
Though Beijing initially denied the existence of re-education camps, Shohrat Zakir, chairman of the XUAR, told China’s official Xinhua news agency in October 2018 that the facilities are an effective tool to protect the country from terrorism and provide vocational training for Uyghurs