Authorities in Xinjiang collected the bodies of Uyghur residents in the northeastern city of Ghulja who died during a strict coronavirus lockdown but did not inform the families of the deceased about whether they handled their remains according to Islamic burial rituals, local officials said.
Ghulja, known as Yining in Chinese, has been under lockdown since early August due to outbreaks of the COVID-19 virus, in some cases leading to deaths from starvation or lack of access to medicine in the city of roughly a half-million mainly Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, RFA reported earlier.
