Thousands elderly Uyghurs in internment camps in China’s Xinjiang region

WASHINGTON – Thousands of elderly Uyghurs have been detained in China’s Xinjiang region since 2016, according to Uyghur activists. 

They say that many of those detained have died in custody, often without their families being notified.

Those who survived were subjected to forced labor, political indoctrination, and cultural oppression.

There are reportedly 1,481 Uighurs aged 55 or older in detention, most of whom were grandparents and retirees.

Human rights groups have called on the international community to hold China accountable for its treatment of Uighurs.

One Uighur activist told the media that thousands of elderly people were detained for no reason other than that they wanted to live normal lives.

Rights activists said the people, aged up to ninety, had been forced to conform to the Chinese language.

They were subjected to endless propaganda by the Communist Party to eradicate local Uighur culture.

In 2016, Chinese authorities unleashed a wave of arrests and detentions against the Turkic population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The region, with its vast deserts, mountains, and oases, is three times the size of France and is located in northwestern China.

Among the many thousands rounded up under the iron fist of Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chén Quánguó and put into so-called vocational training camps and prisons.

He was promoted in 2016 from suppressing dissidents in neighboring Tibet.