Uighur leader calls for detention camps closure
NHK World – Japan, 20 November 2018
By NHK World – Japan The leader of exiled Uighur people has called for support from the Japanese government to close Chinese detention camps in the ethnicity’s autonomous region.
Dolkun Isa made the appeal at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo on Tuesday.
He is president of the World Uyghur Congress, a group of Uighur people living outside China.
International human rights groups say a large number of Uighur Muslims are unjustly being detained in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Beijing says it provides vocational training at these facilities, and that they are part of measures to prevent the spread of terrorism.
Dolkun said more than one million Uighur people are being held in concentration camps and being deprived of their basic rights.
He said they are subjected to brainwashing aimed at eroding their ties to their Uighur identity and face ill treatment.
He said he heard of his mother’s death in May after she was detained along with other family members.
Dolkun said that if most of the world remains silent about the concentration camps, it would serve as “a green light” to the detentions by China.
He said he wants the political leaders of Western nations and Japan to use their moral and political power to demand that China close the camps immediately.