China’s Xinjiang province an ‘open-air prison’, US official says

Annual US report also criticises Iran, Myanmar, Russia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia over their treatment of religious minorities.

China has turned its far western region of Xinjiang into an “open-air prison” for Uighur Muslims a United States official has said as the US released an annual report on the state of religious freedoms worldwide. The Chinese government has turned “the entire region into an open-air prison”, said Daniel Nadel the director of the US State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom on Wednesday. China had relied on putting large numbers of Uighurs in camps for “re-education” and “forced labour” but has broadened its repression to encompass the entire region, Nadel said at a media conference in Washington, DC.