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Australia is being urged join the push for economic sanctions against China over the mass detention of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Australia’s Uighur diaspora has urged the government to follow the lead of US senators who called the treatment of the minority group a "human rights crisis".
In Australia's 2016 Census, 1,051 people identified "Uighur" as one of their ancestries, but surveys by The East Turkistan Australian Association suggest around 4,000 Uighur Muslims now call Australia home.
Last month, a UN human rights panel said it had received credible reports up to one million Uyghurs may be held in detention, claims China dismissed.
Reports say the secret “internment camps” are designed to rid the Muslim Turkic minority of their devotion to Islam and swear loyalty to China's President Xi Jinping.
A sign describes this facility on the edge of Hotan, a city in Xinjiang, as a concentrated transformation-through-education center.
Why China is detaining Muslims in vast numbers
Nurmuhammad Tukistani from the East Turkistan Australian Association said the treatment of Uighurs by Chinese officials has taken a huge toll on the mental health of those in the local community.
"The daily trauma that we carry about the situation is deeply affecting our lives, our work, our eating our social interactions," he told SBS News.
"I am a father of four; I had to give up my job … because I can't deal with the recurrence of the atrocities. The trauma has deeply affected me; both the mental side, the physical and emotional side.”
The association has presented a petition with 10,000 signatures to parliament, calling on the Australian government to apply pressure to end the detention policy in Xinjiang.
A spokesperson from the office of Foreign Minister Marise Payne said consular officials have raised the issue with their Chinese counterparts.
"The Australian Government is concerned about the situation in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," said the statement provided to SBS News.
"Our officials have conveyed these concerns to China on a number of occasions, including concerns over relatives of Uyghur Australians."
The calls for sanctions follow the release of a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), documenting the impact of the crackdown.
Former detainee Tohti was quoted in the report as saying: "[W]hat they want is to force us to assimilate, to identify with the country, such that, in the future, the idea of Uighur will be in name only, but without its meaning".
Maya Wang, senior China researcher at HRW urged nations including Australia to apply pressure to China's government.
“Abuses in Xinjiang are already affecting foreign nationals or families of those living abroad. People are being detained for having families abroad,” she said.
"Governments really need to step up dramatically."
China's foreign ministry has rejected the report, saying HRW is "full of prejudice".
Its spokesman Geng Shuang said: "The series of policy measures put in place in Xinjiang are aimed at promoting stability, development, unity and livelihoods, and at the same time are to crack down in accordance with the law against ethnic separatism and violent terrorist criminal activities, to protect the country's security, people's lives and property."
Source: SBS News