"Ask any Uighur living in Australia or around the world whether they are able to speak with their families in Xinjiang. The answer is no. If we call them, they go to jail."

China this week denied the camps even exist. The Chinese government was forced to respond after the reports of mass detentions in hundreds of so-called re-education centres across Xinjiang were judged last Friday to be "credible" by a United Nations human rights panel. After hearing of Xinjiang's systematic effort to round up Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities and force them into centres where they were made to chant pro-Communist Party slogans, denounce their religion and where torture was common, the UN's Gay McDougall said Xinjiang had become "something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of 'no rights zone'".

McDougall is vice chair of the UN's Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and her comments – given the UN is considered to be a neutral observer – are a breakthrough for those families affected because they could embolden governments to take up the issue more forcefully with China.

So far, the Australian government has been relatively quiet. In response to a list of questions from AFR Weekend, including whether the government was aware of any Australian citizens or permanent residents being held in the camps, and if it planned to use its new position as a member of the Human Rights Council to pressure China to close them, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop provided a two-line statement.

This November 2, 2017 photo shows police officers on duty in the vicinity of a centre believed to be used for re-education in Korla, in China's Xinjiang region. NG HAN GUAN

"The Australian Government shares concerns expressed by the international community on the situation in Xinjiang," she said.

"Our officials have conveyed these concerns to China on a number of occasions."

There is some concern Australian residents or citizens might have been caught up in the crack down and certainly family members of Uighurs living in Australia have been detained.


China director for Human Rights Watch Sophie Richardson, who was part of the panel discussion hosted at the Lowy Institute this week, says Canberra should be doing more.

In this November 4, 2017 photo, Uighur security personnel patrol near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in western China's Xinjiang region. NG HAN GUAN

"This is an abuse on a scale we have not seen in a long time," she says.

"Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull have both said Australia supports a rules-based international order, well here it is nakedly under assault. It's fine to be enthusiastic about that concept in the abstract but this is a time when governments like Australia have to get out and fight for it."

The problem for the Australian government is that just three days prior to the UN's damning assessment of the situation in Xinjiang, Turnbull gave what has since been dubbed the "China reset speech".

In an effort to repair the frayed Australia-China relationship and revive high-level ministerial visits, Turnbull adopted a more conciliatory tone in the speech to an audience that included China's top local diplomats.

It was an attempt to move beyond the heated debate over China's attempts to influence Australia's political system, which triggered the new foreign interference laws. For many in diplomatic and business circles, the "reset" was long overdue.

However, James Leibold, an associate professor at La Trobe University, who has written extensively on China's policy in Xinjiang, says poor management of the bilateral relationship has hindered Australia's ability to speak up on these vital human rights issues.


"The government is lurching from one extreme to another and its China policy lacks consistency," he says.

"Human rights should be a consistent part of our engagement with China. We have a moral obligation to speak up about this issue," he says adding both the US and Canada have taken a stronger stand.

"It is detrimental to our international standing and it doesn't help the bilateral relationship," he says. "We should be honest about where we have disagreements."

Mehmet Celepci, a migration agent and interpreter, says while he welcomes the global spotlight on the detention camps in Xinjiang, "it is important not to forget the people living outside the camps".

"They are waiting to be taken any minute," he says.

China, meanwhile, denies the accusations. Hu Lianhe, a senior Chinese Communist Party official told the human rights panel this week there was "no such thing as re-education centres" and China didn't target any ethnic minority. Although, he did concede minor criminals were provided with "assistance and education" for their "rehabilitation".

The country's nationalistic state-owned newspaper,The Global Times, mounted its own defence of Beijing's actions, without admitting to the existence of the camps.

"Through the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the national strength of the country and the contribution of local officials, Xinjiang has been salvaged from the verge of massive turmoil. It has avoided the fate of becoming 'China's Syria' or 'China's Libya,'" the newspaper said in an editorial.


China maintains Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamists plotting terror attacks. After bloody protests in 2009, in which Uighurs demonstrated against years of discrimination, the ethnic group was subject to intrusive checks, surveillance and monitoring.

In 2014, China faced international condemnation after sentencing Ilham Tohti – an economics professor and an ethnic Uighur, who had regularly criticised the Chinese government over its policies in Xinjiang – to life in prison. After a five-month detention in an unknown facility he had been found guilty of "separatism" by a Chinese court.

The security crackdown in Xinjiang intensified after a series of terrorism incidents that Chinese authorities said were linked to Uighur separatists. When the former Party Secretary of Tibet, Chen Quanguo, took over in Xinjiang, he introduced "de-extremification" measures, which included confiscating the passports of all Uighurs so that anyone wishing to travel must apply to have their passport returned. Since July last year more than 200 Uighur students in Egypt have been arrested and returned to China at Beijing's request. Xinjiang's government also banned veils, long beards and a list of religious names for babies. It also forced residents to download a surveillance app on their phone.

The mass detentions are reported to have started around March last year. In a significant report, Adrian Zenz, a lecturer at the European School of Culture and Theology in Korntal, Germany, tracked government procurement and construction bids valued at around 680 million yuan ($136 million) and recruitment notices for the centres in a bid to show the extent of Xinjiang's re-education campaign.

Both Leibold and Richardson say Canberra could use its position on the Human Rights Council to push for an investigation.

"Julie Bishop lobbied very hard to get Australia's seat on the Human Rights Council," says Leibold. "She said one of the government's key areas of focus would be indigenous human rights."

Richardson says: "There's no reason that Australia and other governments could come together to form a friends-of-Xinjiang coalition for those governments to talk to each other to put some pressure on Beijing to close these camps immediately."

Richardson dismisses an argument often made in diplomatic circles that these representations are better made behind closed doors.

"Australia doesn't have conversations with China about the South China Sea behind closed doors or about problematic trade issues only behind closed doors," she says. "Australia is perfectly capable of being plenty tough on other issues but not on this one. Why is that?"