Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that his country would not deport Uighur Muslims to China if they applied for asylum in Malaysia.
This came in a speech given by Mahathir in the Malaysian parliament in response to the opposition's questions about the persecution of the Muslim Uighurs minority by the Chinese authorities.
The Malaysian Prime Minister pointed to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of countries, but he called on the international community to recognize the exposure of Muslims in the world in general, including Uighurs, to pressure, and stressed that the Uighurs have legitimate concerns for their lives.
"If Uighurs ask for asylum, Malaysia will not deport them even if a Chinese request for their extradition came."
In August 2018, a UN human rights committee reported that China is holding about a million Muslim Uighurs in secret camps.
According to official statistics, there are 30 million Muslims in China, of whom 23 million are Uighurs, while unofficial reports estimate the number of Muslims at nearly 100 million, or about 9.5% of the total population.