Istanbul (AP) – Uyghurs in Turkey called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing during a protest.
Around 1,000 participants gathered in Istanbul and shouted phrases like “China, stop the genocide,” said the protest’s co-organizer, Musa Abdulehed Er, of the German Press Agency. China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping opened the games on Friday in Beijing.
China is internationally criticized for dealing with the Muslim minority in the country. According to estimates by human rights activists, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been sent to re-education camps, which Beijing describes as “further education institutions”.
An estimated ten million Uyghurs live in China, most of them in Xinjiang in north-west China. The Muslim Turkic people feel oppressed by the ruling Han Chinese. An estimated 50,000 Uyghurs live in Turkey, many of whom have fled persecution in China.