Uyghur journalist Qurban Mamut, who disappeared three years ago, is in prison

Qurban Mamut disappeared in 2017, a few months after visiting his son Bahram Qurban in the United States. It is not clear whether he is in prison or in a concentration camp. For the United Nations, one million Uyghurs are arbitrarily detained. Often the Chinese authorities arrest the families of Uyghurs who live abroad.

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - An Uyghur journalist whose whereabouts has not been known for three years is in detention. This is what Radio Free Asia learned from an employee of the Public Culture Office of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

Qurban Mamut went missing in November 2017, a few months after visiting his son Bahram Qurban in the United States. It is unclear whether the former editor of the Xinjiang Cultural Journal is in prison or in an internment camp.

According to the United Nations, over one million Uyghurs (out of a population of nearly 10 million) and other Turkic-speaking minorities of Islamic faith are arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang, which the local population calls "Eastern Turkestan".

Beijing denies these accusations, and replies that these people are housed in professional education and assistance centers to combat terrorism, separatism and Islamic extremism. Human rights activists, and many governments in the West, describe them as real concentration camps that aim to destroy the cultural identity of the Uyghur ethnic group in favor of the Han majority in the country.

Bahram Qurban raised the alarm for the disappearance of his father in October 2018. He claimed to have learned from family and acquaintances that Mamut had been arrested and interned in some camp in Xinjiang. For Bahram, his father’s dentention is due to the fact that the authorities of the Chinese Communist Party often arrest the family members of the Uyghurs who live abroad to exercise a form of control over them.