The forced repatriations to China are ongoing.

On April 13, Saudi Arabia deported a Uyghur woman and her 13-year-old daughter to China, where they risk being detained in the vast web of “re-education camps” in western China’s Xinjiang Province. The girl’s father and another Uyghur, a Muslim scholar, continue to be detained in the kingdom. It is unclear if any of them were formally charged.

Anthropologist Adrian Zenz, who has studied and documented Beijing’s systematic repression of Uyghurs, says Beijing is using economic might and gifts of infrastructure projects — its global Belt and Road initiative — to pressure countries, including those with majority Muslim populations that might be sympathetic to the Uyghurs’ plight.

“The Chinese are quite scared of what Muslim populations think of their treatment of the Uyghurs and have exerted particular effort in influencing government and popular opinion in those countries,” said Zenz, who is a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington.