At Least 150 Detainees Have Died in One Xinjiang Internment Camp: Police Officer
October 29, 2019“At least 150 people have died over the course of six months while detained at an internment camp for mainly ethnic Uyghurs in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to an official source, marking the first confirmation of mass deaths since the camps were introduced in 2017.
A police officer confirmed the figure while RFA’s Uyghur Service was investigating unconfirmed reports that more than 200 people from a township in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefecture’s Kuchar (Kuche) county had died in detention.
The officer at the Kuchar County Police Department said that at least 150 had died at just one of the county’s four internment camps—the No. 1 Internment Camp in the Yengisher district of the county seat, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from Kuchar city center.
“No, you cannot say that [200 died from Ucha township]” said the officer, who declined to be named, but previously served for six months as an administrative assistant at the camp in Yengisher.
“Not that many—it’s more like 150 or so [from No. 1 Camp],” he said, adding that the deaths had occurred from June to December 2018, during the time he was assigned to the facility. He was unable to provide information about any deaths that might have occurred at the camp prior to the time he worked there or after he left.”