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Chinese policemen monitor the exit of the Kashgar Mosque in the Xianjing area where the Uyghur Muslim minority lives. (Illustration image) Johannes EISELE / AFP

A month after revealing that a million Turkish-speaking Muslims are being held in Xinjiang political re-education camps, the NGO Human Rights Watch on Tuesday (October 16th) draws attention to the plight of children in this extreme autonomous region. west of China, of which an impossible number to check is placed in orphanages following the arbitrary detention of their parents.

China firmly defended on Tuesday, October 16, its program of internment of Muslim citizens in the north-west of the country, a senior local official ensuring that it is to fight terrorism through centers of " vocational training ".

Up to one million Uyghurs and other Chinese-speaking Turkish-speaking ethnic groups are believed to have been or are believed to have been held in these settlements in the Xinjiang region, according to estimates quoted by a UN panel of experts. Uighurs attributed to Uyghurs have left hundreds of deaths in recent years in the country. Beijing says it is worried about a surge of radical Islamism in Xinjiang, where about half of the estimated 24 million people are Muslims.

China first denied the existence of internment centers . But the publication of satellite images and the presence on the internet of official documents mentioning their existence pushed her to reconsider her position. Xinjiang thus published last week rules explicitly codifying these institutions. But the internment of many adults in these institutions means that young people are now without their parents. Some are raised by their immediate family, others are given to public orphanages.

" A new generation of traumatized people "

" Our concern is that in this context of repression and separation, the children are being taken from their uncles and aunts, their grandparents, which will create a new generation of traumatized people. It also concerns us because it is a new way for the Chinese authorities to destroy an identity in its own right, "said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.

" In a few weeks, the human rights situation in China will be examined at the United Nations . It is therefore a crucial moment for countries like France to ask China about its practices of placing children, who have extended family, in orphanages and to demand the closure of the camps and the release of children. prisoners, "she continues.

(With agencies)