In defiance of international pressure, Chinese President Xi Jinping has defended China’s policies targeting Uyghurs and other Muslim communities in the province of Xinjiang. On Saturday, Xi said the policy has been “completely correct.” There have been widespread reports of surveillance, forced labor, imprisonment, cultural repression, as well as forced sterilizations and child separations, of Muslim populations in Xinjiang. A new report from The New York Times reveals thousands of religious Muslim sites in Xinjiang, including mosques, have been destroyed in recent years.

On Friday, a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, raised the alarm over China’s actions in Xinjiang, as well as their assault on human rights in Hong Kong. A Uyghur activist whose family is in China spoke at the gathering.

Abdulxukur Abdurixit: “My family is held hostage in a Chinese concentration camp. My brother is forced to assemble phone chargers as a slave laborer. Your charger may be among them. Three million Uyghurs are being detained in concentration camps. Imagine the population of Berlin or Chicago locked up as slaves.”