China is being accused of deliberately eradicating the graves of generations of Uighurs after tombs belonging to the Muslim minority group were reportedly destroyed and bones removed from major sites.
Agence France Presse research combined with satellite imagery from Earthrise Alliance shows the removal of graves across a two year period.
The official explanation for the clearing is urban development or simply the "standardisation" of old graves, but overseas Uighurs say its little more than the eradication of ethnic identity.
Salih Hudayar's grandparents were buried on a site that has since been torn up. He told The Telegraph UK it is having a devastating cultural impact on his people.
Bones are discovered at the site where a Uighur cemetery once stood at Shayar in the region of Xinjiang. Source: AFP
"That's why they're destroying all of these historical sites, these cemeteries, to disconnect us from our history, from our fathers and our ancestors," he said.
"This is all part of China's campaign to effectively eradicate any evidence of who we are, to effectively make us like the Han Chinese."
In 2018, Uighur exile groups reported Chinese authorities had begun setting up “burial management centres” in a targeted effort to exert greater control over the private lives of the ethnic minority.
Satellite imagery suggests the Chinese government has exhumed and cleared at least 45 Uighur cemeteries since 2014 - the vast majority of which have been exhumed in the past two years.
Work on a park is pictured where the Uighur cemetery in Kuche once stood. Source: AFP
Nurgul Sawut lives in Australia but has five generations of relatives who were buried in southwestern Xinjiang. She last travelled to the region in 2016 for her father's funeral.
"It is much deeper than (just religious persecution)," she told The Telegraph UK.
"If you destroy that cemetery...you're uprooting whoever's on that land, whoever's connected to that land."
China has rejected criticism on the issue and maintains there is no evidence of any human rights issues in the region.
