Central Asians cry out over Xinjiang rights crisis Chinese policymakers talk of Xinjiang, a northwestern border region home to significant Muslim minorities, as an economic bridge to underdeveloped Central Asia. But international rights groups say the region has become a police state, with up to one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic minorities held in a sprawling network of political re-education camps in the name of combating Islamic extremism and separatism. With Uighurs lacking a historic homeland beyond the region, the stories of separation told by citizens of ex-Soviet republics Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan with loved ones across the border offer insights into the scale of the crackdown. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES