In light of the COVID-19 outbreak that started in Wuhan, China there has been heightened scrutiny of the country’s questionable business practices and allegations of basic human rights violations.

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has further highlighted the desperate situation in which minority Muslim groups – predominantly Uyghurs – have been under intense pressure from China’s Communist Party (CCP) since the spring of 2017, with laws being introduced banning children from speaking their native language in school, men growing long beards and women wearing veils.

The mother and daughter of a wealthy Uyghur family in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms related to their overseas connections, according to family members who live abroad and local officials.

Chinese citizen journalist and lawyer Chen Qiushi is incommunicado, believed detained, after reporting from the front line of the coronavirus epidemic in the central city of Wuhan.

A court in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region has sentenced 12 Tibetan villagers to prison terms of from one to almost two years for running “a criminal gang,” state media said on Tuesday.

China on Friday denied reports that the jailed former head of Xinjiang University Tashpolat Teyip had been tried and sentenced to death, a day after the United Nations expressed concern over his case and demanded clarification on his situation.

A prominent Uyghur historian who disappeared in 2017 has been confirmed jailed in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to his U.S.-based daughter, who said his sentence likely stemmed from a book he published three years earlier.