Nearly 10,000 Uygurs involved in deadly riots in northwestern Xinjiang region went missing in one night, exiled Uygur activist Rebiya Kadeer said on Wednesday, calling for an international investigation, says the South China Morning Post.

Reuters reports that Kadeer, during a visit to Tokyo, stated:

“The nearly 10,000 (Uighur) people who were at the protest, they disappeared from Urumqi in one night. If they are dead, where are their bodies? If they are detained, where are they?”

Kadeer called on the international community to send an independent investigative team to Urumqi to uncover details of what had taken place.

The official death toll from the riots stands at 197, most of whom were Han Chinese who form the majority of China’s 1.3 billion population. Almost all the others were Uighurs, a Muslim people native to Xinjiang and culturally tied to Central Asia and Turkey.

More than 1,000 people were detained in the immediate aftermath of the riots, and over 200 more in recent days, state media said. None has been publicly charged.

China has accused Kadeer, who lives in exile in Washington, of triggering the riots and of spreading misinformation. It took great glee in pointing out that pictures she said were taken in Urumqi actually came from an unrelated incident in another part of the country.

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