The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, says Uyghurs are being used for forced labor.

Peter Irwin, program manager at the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), said Pompeo’s meeting shows that the U.S. government places great importance on the Uyghur issue, in an email to The Epoch Times.

Earlier in the afternoon more than 1,000 people had rallied calmly, waving Uyghur flags and posters.

Jewher’s father, Ilham Tohti, was a Uyghur economics professor in Beijing who ran a website called “Uighur Biz,” which attempted to form a bridge between the Uyghurs in China and the Han Chinese.

US Action In March, Pompeo met with a Uyghur survivor of the camps, and three other Uyghurs whose relatives have either been detained at the camps or criminally sentenced in China.

House of Representatives passed legislation requiring a stronger response to Beijing's treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority. U.S.

A 54-year-old former Uyghur detainee, Gulbakhar Jalilova, a Kazakhstan national, told The Epoch Times that young Uyghur women are being raped daily by CCP officials in the camps and could be killed if they resist.

In recent years, Uyghurs, house Christians, and other persecuted minorities have also been targeted by the regime for forced organ harvesting.

The Uyghur Act of 2019 is an amended, and stronger version of the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act from U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ), that angered Beijing when it passed the Senate in September.

The United Nations says at least 1 million ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims have been held in mass detention, deprived of any legal rights, and subjected to mistreatment.

, the name that Uyghur exiles use for Xinjiang.

As governor, Bekri supported policies that restricted religious practices of the Muslim Uyghurs, who make up a majority of the overall Uyghur population. He was also a proponent of educating Xinjiang's Turkic-speaking school children in Mandarin.

Activists say they are mass detention camps holding more than 1 million ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims.

, Epoch Times journalist Venus Upadhayaya hosts an interview with Gulchehra Hoja, a prominent Uyghur journalist for Radio Free Asia.

China worries that Uyghurs, who speak a Turkic language, have gone to places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Iraq to fight for militants.

Since then, the Chinese regime has labeled Uyghurs a terror threat, justifying the severe suppression of the population as anti-terror measures, including banning students from speaking Uyghur in schools, burning religious books, and throwing Uyghurs

BEIJING—Members of the Uyghur Muslim ethnic group are calling on China to post videos of their relatives who have disappeared into a vast system of internment camps.

Yu’s account corroborates an October 2018 Radio Free Asia report that authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region were "secretly transferring Uyghur detainees to prisons in Heilongjiang province and other areas throughout the country

For members of the Uyghur diaspora, losing a family member into the sprawling system has become all too common.

Commerce Department placed on the Entity List in October 2019 for supplying surveillance technology used against Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on countries around the world not to succumb to Beijing’s pressure and repatriate ethnic Uyghurs back to China, where they could be subject to heavy suppression.

Former detainees have recounted Uyghurs being tortured, raped, and even killed in these camps.

The CCP justified its treatment of Uyghurs as "counterterrorism" efforts. Official news also had started criticizing Uyghur customs, including dress, facial hair, and religious schooling.

WASHINGTON—Countries must hit China with sanctions over the mass detention of ethnic Uyghurs, hundreds of scholars said on Nov. 26, warning that a failure to act would signal acceptance of "psychological torture of innocent civilians."

“We remain concerned by China’s ongoing abuses against religious groups, dissidents, and ethnic groups, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners, among others,” the State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

Escalating Crackdown on Uyghur Intellectuals At least 338 Uyghur intellectuals have been “interned, imprisoned, or forcibly disappeared” by the CCP since April 2017, a January report (PDF) by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) found.

The CCP has used the excuse of potential “extremist threats” to justify its strict surveillance and crackdown on Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the region.

"We are alarmed by the government of China’s worsening crackdown on Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," U.S. charge d'affaires Mark Cassayre said.

The bodies of those Uyghurs who die in the “re-education” camps are never released to their families, several Uyghur families told The Epoch Times.

A Uyghur woman (C) going through an entrance to a bazaar in Hotan, in China's northwest Xinjiang region on May 31, 2019.