Retired Uyghur civil servant died at China's Xinjiang detention camp: Report

Retired Uyghur civil servant Niyaz Nasir is confirmed to have died in China's Xinjiang internment camp, according to a report.

The retired Uyghur civil servant Niyaz Nasir, who was abducted by police and taken to an internment camp more than three years ago, died at the end of last year, according to Radio Free Asia.

China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention camps since 2017. Beijing has said the camps are vocational training centres and has denied widespread and documented allegations that it has mistreated and tortured incarcerated Muslims.

Earlier, Niyaz Nasir, 78, had worked at a government food bureau in Toqquzaq county (in Chinese, Shufu Xian) in the Kashgar (Kashi Diqu) prefecture of north-western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. No explanation was given for his death, and the reasons for his detention are still unclear, according to Radio Free Asia.

Also, Niyaz's three children, members of the Chinese Communist Party and also civil servants, had asked that their father be released on bail from the camp in Toqquzaq's Opal township after seeing him weak and fragile in a virtual meeting on screen in late 2018, a month before his death.

Earlier, increased international awareness of the camp system and other abuses, including forced labour and forced sterilisation of women, has prompted parliaments in Canada, the Netherlands, the UK and Lithuania, as well as US State Department, to brand China's actions in the region as genocide.

Further, on December 10, Human Rights Day, the United States imposed a visa ban on the current and previous chairmen of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Erken Tuniyaz and Shorat Zakir over presiding a surveillance program that resulted in mass detentions.

Earlier, on December 8, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government would join a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics along with the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Lithuania, over human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

( With inputs from ANI )

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