“Today, I have signed into law S. 3744, the “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020” (the “Act”). The Act holds accountable perpetrators of human rights violations and abuses such as the systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghurs and other minorities in China,” Trump said.
As of 2018, it was estimated that the Chinese authorities may have detained hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians as well as some foreign citizens such as Kazakhstanis, who are being held in these secretive internment camps which are located throughout the region.
In May 2018, Randall Schriver of the United States Department of Defense repeated claims that “at least a million but likely closer to three million citizens” were imprisoned in detention centers in a strong condemnation of the “concentration camps”.
In August 2018, a United Nations human rights panel said that it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uyghurs in China have been held in in internment camps, where they are reportedly subjected to torture, cruel and inhumane treatment such as physical and sexual abuse, forced labor and death.