Seventeen Australian residents have been detained in China as part of a crackdown on Muslims, an activist group said on Monday.

Up to one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to be held in camps in China's far-west region of Xinjiang, according to the United Nations.

Among them are 17 Australian residents - 15 with permanent residency and two on spouse visas, campaign group Uighurs in Australia has said.

They are believed to have been detained while visiting family in China and many have children and partners still in Australia who are desperate to see their loved ones again.

A perimeter fence is constructed around what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in Xinjiang in China's far west region. There is mounting evidence to suggest that Muslim inmates are being used as forced labour, reports claim

Dozens of students are shown at their desks learning Chinese and law in a programme that introduced the 'professional vocational training institutions' in Hotan

Activist Nurgul Sawut has been petitioning the Australian government to do more to help the Uighurs, 3,000 of whom are living in Australia.

'Our community members feel let down,' she told The Guardian.

In December Ms Sawut met with officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) - but says the only answer they had for her was 'we are talking to our Chinese counterparts'.

'What does that mean exactly?' she said. 'As an Australian embassy you need to do more to locate these people, to tell us if they're alive or dead.

'The language [the department] is using is very dire. The Australian government is basically saying we can't do anything right now.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted DFAT for comment.

A statement from the Chinese embassy in Canberra did not address the issue of the 17 Australians who are allegedly detained.

It read: 'It is a wish shared by people of all ethnic groups for Xinjiang to maintain enduring social stability, since it serves their fundamental interests.

'The series of measures implemented in Xinjiang are meant to improve stability, development, solidarity and people's livelihood, crack down on and prevent ethnic separatist activities and violent and terrorist crimes, safeguard national security, and protect people's life and property.'

A building of what is officially called a vocational skills education centre in Hotan, Xinjiang

The Xinjiang detention centres first appeared in 2014 shortly after officials launched a new 'strike hard' campaign against 'terrorism' after deadly violence in the region.

China says people are at the camps voluntarily and describes them as 'professional vocational training institutions' used to counter terrorism while improving employment opportunities for citizens guilty of minor offences.

But Uighur activists believe people are being detained against their will and badly mistreated inside.

There are approximately 12 million people who belong to Muslim minorities in Xinjiang - with as many as one million detained.

Patrick Poon, China researcher at Amnesty, told MailOnline the group hasn't seen this many people detained in camps in recent Chinese history.

'The camps are similar to the wartime concentration camps, the scale is comparable and the repressive environment is similar,' he said.

Muslim trainees work in a factory in the Hotan Vocational Education and Training Center

'There are brainwashing political classes in the camps, where people are beaten up if they don't follow orders. The overall atmosphere is very repressive,' he added, citing accounts from ex-detainees.

An AFP report in October revealed that thousands of guards at the camps were equipped with tear gas, Tasers, stun guns and spiked clubs, according to publicly available government documents.

The centres should 'teach like a school, be managed like the military, and be defended like a prison', said one document, quoting Xinjiang's party secretary Chen Quanguo.

To build new, better Chinese citizens, a document argued, the centres must first 'break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins'.

In previous reports, people who have been detained at the centres have said they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, as well as denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the ruling Communist Party.

Satellite images purported to show the camps where Muslim minorities are held in Xinjiang

The Hotan Vocational Education and Training Center sits behind barbed wire in Xinjiang

They also found themselves incarcerated for transgressions such as wearing long beards and face veils or sharing Islamic holiday greetings on social media, a process that echoes the decades of brutal thought reform under Mao Zedong.

After undergoing indoctrination at the camps, detainees are sent to the new factories built inside or near the internment camps in an emerging system of forced labour, according to the New York Times.

Satellite imagery suggests that production lines are being built inside some internment camps. Another image of a camp featured in a state television broadcast shows 10 to 12 large buildings with a design commonly used for factories, according to the report.

Commercial registration records show several companies including a printing factory, a noodle factory and at least two clothing and textile manufacturers were established at addresses inside interment camps.

A Turkish researcher told The New York Times that the detainees 'provide free or low-cost forced labour for these factories,' based on the various inmate accounts he has collected through interviewing their relatives.

Inmates told their relatives that they were forced to make clothes under tough working conditions and earned low wages, according to Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights, an organisation in Kazakhstan that helps ethnic Kazakhs who have left neighboring Xinjiang.

Muslim trainees seen working in a garment factory at the Hotan vocational centre

China has admitted to the alleged use of internment camps for Muslim minorities in Xinjiang

One detainee was sent from a camp to work in a carpet factory and another was sent to work at a textile factory for US$95 (£75) a month. They are not allowed to leave the factories and communication with relatives, if permitted, is heavily monitored, according to a Financial Times report.

However, since August, the Chinese government has defended the camps by arguing that they are vocational training centres that will provide detainees the skills needed for a job in Chinese society, including learning Mandarin.

Participation is voluntary, according to state-broadcaster CCTV in a report in October, releasing footage purportedly showing 'contented' Muslim trainees wearing matching uniforms, studying Mandarin and learning trades like knitting, weaving and baking.

'Xinjiang has established a training model with professional vocational training institutions as the platform, learning the country's common language, legal knowledge, vocational skills, along with de-extremisation education,' the chairman of Xinjiang's government, Shohrat Zakir, said in an ardent defence of the use of the centres.

Security guards stand at the gates of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Huocheng County in Xinjiang in September

'Through vocational training, most trainees have been able to reflect on their mistakes and see clearly the essence and harm of terrorism and religious extremism,' he said.

China has said Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tension between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

Zakir previously reiterated: 'Today's Xinjiang is not only beautiful but also safe and stable. No matter where they are or at what time of the day, people are no longer afraid of going out, shopping, dining and travelling.'

However, critics have warned that mass incarcerations and forced cultural assimilation of China's western Muslim minorities risk further inflaming and perpetuating separatist anger.