As China continues to detain Uighurs and other minorities in internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang, a group of volunteers in Kazakhstan is collecting thousands of accounts from families whose relatives are being held in hopes of shedding additional light on the vast human rights abuses.

Members of the Almaty-based group Talpyn Zhastar help Kazakh families document the missing and film videos appealing for information about relatives who have been swept up into the camps along with Uighurs.

Gulzira Auelhan, 39, a former detainee, recounts her experience in a Xinjiang internment camp to Talpyn Zhastar director Gaukar Kurmanaliyeva. "We had to learn Mandarin Chinese, Chinese political history and Xi Jinping thought," Auelhan says in the video. Detainees were given injections and Auelhan now suffers from headaches and kidney pain and is no longer able to have children, she added. (Video provided by Talpyn Zhastar)

The group helps families write letters to the Kazakh authorities urging them to locate those who have disappeared in China. Volunteers also accompany former detainees who have been released to medical examinations.

Talpyn Zhastar, or Motivated Youth, says it has collected around 2,000 reports of missing ethnic Kazakhs since April. The documents are added to a database of around 10,000 testimonies and videos compiled by Atajurt, a predecessor grassroots organisation formerly led by the prominent activist Serikzhan Bilash.

The camps, where detainees are forced to learn Mandarin Chinese and Communist Party history, have drawn international condemnation. China has sought to defend the camps, claiming they are vocational training centres aimed at rooting out terrorism.

An estimated one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been sent to the detention centres. Ethnic Kazakhs are believed to be the second largest group being held. There are around 1.5 million ethnic Kazakhs and 12 million Uighurs living in the Xinjiang region.