Thu 21 May 2020:
Documents from the Chinese government show that Beijing requested the extradition of a Uighur man who left China amid the communist country’s continued oppression of his Muslim community and fled to Turkey.
A 2016 document asks for the extradition of Enver Turdi, who in 2014 fled Xinjiang in northwest China, where there is a large community of Uighur Muslims, and since then has resided in Turkey, Axios reported Wednesday. Other documents include police reports and documentation that the Turkish Ministry of Justice accepted Beijing’s request. The documents were obtained by Turdi’s lawyer earlier this year.
Turdi’s case highlights the plight of Uighur Muslims in China, whose culture Beijing has chosen to suppress in the name of national cohesion.
The Chinese government has detained since 2017 an estimated one million if not more Uighur Muslims and other minorities in “re-education camps” around Xinjiang, which are designed to instill a sense of loyalty to the government. Around 80,000 Uighurs have been forced to work in factories, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimated.
China claims that the detention camps are for voluntary education and training and are used to combat extremism, but Chinese government documents leaked last year detail how the facilities are run with extreme control over their residents.
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