Sweden halts Uighur deportations to China
Sweden's Migration Agency has announced that it has temporarily halted the deportation of Muslim minority Uighurs to China due to concerns over the situation in the western region of Xinjiang.
Uighurs and members of other Muslim minorities will no longer be deported from Sweden to China, according to a statement from the Migration Agency (migrationsverket).
The ruling also applies to cases where asylum has already been denied, including a family of four who were facing deportation to Xinjiang.
Earlier this month, a United Nations human rights committee raised serious concerns about the treatment of Uighurs in China, saying they were being treated as "enemies of the State" based on nothing more than their ethno-religious identity.
The Migration Agency says it has acted on information from several human rights organisations which indicates that the situation for Uighurs has deteriorated. The agency told Radio Sweden that they cannot give out details of how many Uighurs in Sweden might be affected by the decision to halt deportations.
