SW News: The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) is continuing its mission of unveiling the extent of enforced disappearances in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. As part of the government-sponsored crackdown between 900,000 and 1.8 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslims have been forcibly sent to high-security “vocational education and training centers” by the communist authorities. Although they are called training facilities, rights activists and groups such as WGAD believe they are nothing but torture camps.
There are reports that the detainees in these camps are subjected to physical and psychological torture, harsh questioning, rape and forced sterilization. This was revealed by the UN Office of the High Commissioner For Human Rights.
It was in 2017 that the Chinese authorities began a large-scale drive to alter the cultural, linguistic, social and religious elements in the region inhabited by Turkic-speaking Muslims. Although Beijing announced two years later that the camp system had been wound up as the people who were lodged there had graduated, rights groups took it with a pinch of salt.

As these claims cannot be verified, human rights activists allege that while some people were released from the camps, others were sent to jail. Authorities in Xinjiang have indicated that as many as 540,826 people have been prosecuted in the province having a population of 25.8 million people.

Due to the strict censoring of information in China, it is virtually impossible to get a clear picture of the number of detentions in Xinjiang and the atrocities committed against minorities.

Investigations undertaken by WGAD result in appeals and communications to the governments concerned. It is their responsibility to respond to the allegations and take action to rectify human rights violations if any.

Over the past year, three interventions were made by WGAD on behalf of Uyghurs and the rights violations they are suffering.