ADELAIDE, Australia — Growing up as a member of the Uighur ethnic group in China’s far west, Farhad Habibullah never felt that his people were oppressed by the state. He came from a family of Communist Party loyalists, part of an elite segment of Uighur society celebrated by the party as model minority members.

But now he has joined other Uighurs in doing what was once, to him, unthinkable — and unthinkably dangerous, even in his new home in Australia : calling for an independent Uighur nation.

“My parents worked for the Chinese Communist Party all their lives, and look at what has happened to them,” Mr. Habibullah said. They and several other relatives, he said, are among as many as one million Uighurs and other Muslims held in indoctrination camps in China.

“You could say I grew up under the red Chinese flag,” he said. “But now I think we have to fight for independence.”