'Heard They Were Taken to Orphanage': China Accused of Separating Uighur Children from Families in Xinjiang Region

New Delhi: China is allegedly separating Muslim children from their families, faith and language, in the western region of Xinjiang, the BBC reported on Thursday. Publicly available documents and interviews with family members overseas showed that while children are being separated and adults detained in camps, several boarding schools are also being constructed in the region.

“I don’t know who is looking after them,” a mother said, pointing to a photograph of her three young daughters.

The Xinjiang region's Uighur minority is restricted by surveillance and mass detentions. The government has in the past sent the Uighurs into what they call “re-education camps”, but in reality, there were no such camps.

Records show that in one township alone, more than 400 children have lost not just one but both parents to some form of internment, either in camps or in prison. Alongside the efforts to transform the identity of Xinjiang's adults, the evidence points to a parallel campaign to systematically remove children from their roots.

Another mother said, “I heard they have been taken to an orphanage.”

In recent weeks, China has invited media outlets to view these camps but has controlled their access to the facilities and detainees, making it impossible to gather testimony. But the evidence pointing at wrongdoing can be reportedly gathered in Turkey.

Uighurs, members of Xinjiang's largest and predominantly Muslim ethnic group, have long had ties of language and faith to Turkey. Thousands have come to study or to do business, visit family, or escape China's birth control limits and the religious repression. But over the past three years, they have found themselves trapped after China began detaining the ethnic group in giant camps.

A Chinese state media outlet called overseas reports on the detainment “fake news” and published detailed denials of eight “rumours”, on the 10th anniversary of the Urumqi riots in which at least 140 people were killed and 828 injured. Many Uighurs say the riots precipitated the increasing oppression of Muslims in the region, according to a report in 'The Guardian'.

Last week, Xinjiang's vice chairman Aierken Tuniyazi told the UN Human Rights Council that no terrorist attacks have occurred in the region in three years. But experts say the absence of visible violence belies the ongoing repression of minority culture and inequality between the Han Chinese majority and Uighurs.

An earlier BBC report had showed a teacher describing inmates as “affected by religious extremism”, and saying the purpose of the camps was “to get rid of their extremist thoughts”.

The prominent Uighur author Nurmuhammad Tohti, 70, died after being held in one of the re-education camps. His granddaughter told 'The Guardian' that he had been denied treatment for diabetes and heart disease.