Dozens of Uyghur Children of Xinjiang Village Camp Detainees Sent to Live in Orphanages
July 02, 2018Dozens of Uyghur children from a mostly Uyghur-populated village in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) whose parents or guardians have been detained in “political re-education camps” have been sent to live in orphanages, according to sources.
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An officer at the Chinibagh village police station, in the seat of Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture’s Qaraqash (Moyu) county, recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that local government officials were deciding the fates of children who had been left behind after their guardians had been sent for re-education.
“Children left without parents have been sent to orphanages temporarily until their parents are released,” said the officer, who is a resident of nearby Yengisheher village, where sources recently told RFA that around 40 percent of the more than 1,700 residents had been detained in re-education camps.
“The children are being placed in the Qaraqash township orphanage because they have no one to look after them. Their grandparents are too old [to take care of them] and are struggling to look after themselves.”
When asked how many children from Yengisheher village had been taken to the orphanage in Qaraqash, the officer said “roughly 50 to 60.”
In October, a Uyghur officer at a police station in Kashgar (Kashi) prefecture’s Peyziwat (Jiashi) county told RFA that children whose guardians had been sent to camps there were also being sent to orphanages.
A Uyghur worker at a regional orphanage in southern Xinjiang, who requested anonymity, told RFA at the time that his facility was seriously overcrowded and described the conditions there as “terrible,” with children between the ages of six months and 12 years “locked up like farm animals in a shed.”