Uighur activists say coronavirus measures causing hunger

Draconian measures by China to curb the coronavirus have caused widespread hunger in the tightly controlled Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, ethnic Uighur activists charged Wednesday.

The Uighur Human Rights Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, also voiced concern that the COVID-19 could spread in internationally condemned camps where more than one million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims are incarcerated.

The group said that China imposed a quarantine with little advance notice in parts of Xinjiang in late January after at least two COVID-19 cases in the regional capital Urumqi.

Citing videos, photos and residents' conversations with members of the Uighur diaspora, the group said that "many" people have gone short on food, medicine or other critical supplies as they have been ordered to stay inside their homes.

In one video believed to have been shot last week in Yining county, a man is heard shouting at officials, "I'm starving. My wife and children are starving," before banging his head into a pole and shouting, "Do you want to kill me? Just kill me."