West has ‘moral obligation…to push back’ over ‘dystopian’ treatment of Uyghurs in China, says author Nury Turkel

Human rights groups believe a network of detention centres across China’s north-western Xinjiang province are being used to detain more than a million Uyghur and Turkic Muslim people.

The Chinese government insists the facilities are ‘re-education centres’. However, armed guards in the towers have orders to shoot and kill anyone who tries to escape.

Nury Turkel is a US-based Uyghur lawyer and human rights advocate who was born in a re-education camp in Kashgar, Xinjiang. He has just published a book about his family’s experience, called No Escape.

We spoke to him and asked of his own experience of repression by the Chinese state.