The United States on Friday claimed that its citizens have been held in detention camps of Xinjiang in China.
US State Department sources told CNN that a few legal US residents were being held back in China. The sources, however, refused to divulge more information citing privacy concerns.
While addressing a press briefing at the State Department, Sam Brownback, the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom said that he has accessed a new, unconfirmed report about a legal US resident, who had not been heard since his visit to Xinjiang.
"He had legal status being here, travelled back to Xinjiang after being here with his son in California. And then has not been heard from since. And he's deeply concerned about whether what his treatment is. He has a number of chronic illnesses, he's a 75-year-old man and an intellectual," Brownback revealed.
Expressing concerns about the detention camps in the south-Asian nation, Brownback said, "And it's not just the camps anymore. Entire villages are being encased and people limited on their movement in and out, of the villages in that region that's occurring as well. The situation continues and in some cases appears to be escalating, not de-escalating."
The State Department Human Rights report of 2018 suggests that Beijing has "arbitrarily" detained 800,000 to possibly more than two million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslims in internment camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identities.
"International media, human rights organizations, and former detainees reported security officials in the camps abused, tortured, and killed some detainee," the report stated.
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