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Uighurs accuse China of mass detention, torture in landmark complaint
Roughly two dozen Uighurs have joined a complaint lodged at the International Criminal Court accusing the Chinese government of crimes against humanity.
International
The cries echoing off the walls of the jail frightened and weakened him in equal measure, Mamattursun Omer said.
“I didn't see, but I could hear the unbearable screams coming from both sides of the corridor,” the former Uighur detainee said, recalling a period starting in 2017 that he says he spent in government custody inside the Xinjiang region of northwest China.
Omer, 29, whose home now is a small rented studio in Istanbul, told NBC News in a video interview he lives in fear the Chinese government will kill him.
Parts of Omer’s account — together with that of roughly two dozen others so far — have been included in a complaint lodged at the International Criminal Court by two organizations of Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority group historically living in what is now northwest China. The organizations accuse the Chinese government and specific senior officials of crimes against humanity, torture and genocide.
Tags: genocide, China, detention, Uighurs