Line 11,135 in an Excel spreadsheet: Erkin Ayup, Konasheher County, Building 1, Cell 122, prisoner, 07/26/2017, assigned for re-education.

That's all Abduweli Ayup knows about his brother's fate.

His name is one of thousands appearing in the Xinjiang Police Files.

The documents and photos document China's dealings with Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.

Anna Schiller

volunteer.

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The data was leaked to anthropologist Adrian Zenz.

A group of international media published parts of it.

The files also include images from the camps in which human rights organizations estimate the Chinese government is holding more than a million people at times.

In more than 2000 portrait shots, people in front of a white background look directly into the camera: a man with cropped hair and bruises on his forehead, a 72-year-old woman with tired eyes, the youngest is only 15 years old.

Other pictures show what is known as a tiger chair, a metal construction into which police officers strap prisoners so that they cannot move during interrogation.

"That was me," says Ayup.

He was also detained and tortured in a camp in Xinjiang for two years.

He only heard what you see in the pictures.

He didn't look at the documents.

Because he was afraid of what names he would find in it.

An acquaintance discovered the information about his brother.

The linguist has not seen his five siblings for years.

Arrested for speaking the mother tongue

Ayup and she grow up in a small town 15 kilometers outside the big city of Kashgar.

The Taklamakan desert stretches to the east and Tajikistan to the west.

Almost everyone who lives here is Uyghur.

Konasheher County now has one of the highest prison rates in the world.

In 2018, about 12 percent of all members of an ethnic minority were in captivity.

Ayup left his homeland in 2015 after being released from the camp.

The government accused him of "separatist endeavours".

Ayup ran a Uyghur language school in Kashgar.

He wants to pass on his mother tongue to the next generation.

He was a thorn in the side of the authorities.

The government is gradually enforcing its language rules in schools in Xinjiang.

Ayup says Uyghur is being banned from public life.

After a few months in captivity, he is brought before a court.

His lawyer is also there.

Ayup sees him for the first time.

During the hearing he says nothing.

At the end, Ayup signs a document that is supposed to contain his statements.

He can't read it.

He is sentenced to 18 months in prison and a fine for embezzlement.

After his release, he is checked almost daily by the police.

In 2015 he managed to escape.

Many years earlier he had obtained identity cards for himself and his family in other regions.

"We're just numbers to the system anyway," says Ayup.

The papers are intended to give the impression that he and his wife lived separately in different cities.

They show their new documents at passport control and board a plane to Turkey – because Ayup was able to apply for their visas online.