Amnesty International says that China has forcibly split up Uighur families by placing young children into state orphanages. It has called on China to release all Uighur children being held in orphanages without the consent of their families. According to the BBC the children had been left with relatives when their parents were forced to flee the country.

The Chinese government, which has detained over a million Uighurs, has been accused of a vast range of human rights abuses against the Uighur people and other Muslim minorities. The BBC reports that these include forced labor, forced sterilization, sexual abuse and rape. It claims that the camps in which the Uighers are being held in, in Xinjiang, are so called “re-education” facilities to combat ‘terrorism’.

The BBC reports that with access to Xinjiang made almost impossible, Amnesty spoke to Uighurs who fled abroad before the crackdown against the Uighur people escalated in 2017. Many of the parents report that the relatives, such as grandparents, whom the children had been temporarily left with, were sent to detention camps and the children placed in state run orphanages, with other relatives afraid to take them in. One Uighur mother said, “Our other relatives didn’t dare to look after my children after what had happened to my parents. They were afraid that they would be sent to camps, too.” They expressed deep sadness that they would never see their children again.

Meanwhile, Alkan Akad, Amnesty International’s China researcher, said, “Children are not allowed to leave, but their parents face persecution and arbitrary detention if they attempt to return home to care for them.”

Umm Muhammed Umar