he Uighurs, a Muslim minority, allegedly have been singled out for mass detention, forced labor and torture in China’s Xinjiang Province. As many as 1 million are estimated to have “disappeared” into camps.
The video shows Merdan Ghappar, a former model, handcuffed to a cot in a narrow, cell-like room with caged windows and a small bed. He’s wearing dark sweats and slippers, and the floor and walls appear dirty. It was published by the BBC on Tuesday.
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Over a loudspeaker, messages are played in Chinese. They are reportedly about politics and history of Xinjiang.
The province also is known as East Turkistan, although the loudspeaker explicitly blares the opposite, according to the BBC’s translation.
The family told the BBC that Ghappar has not been heard from since his last message arrived five months ago.
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His uncle, Abdulhakim Ghappar, likened the oppression of the Uighurs to the death of George Floyd. The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim Turkic ethnic group.
“They have both faced brutality for their race,” he told the BBC. “But while in America, people are raising their voices, in our case, there is silence.”