BEIJING, 29 August. - (ANA)  -  China has launched a crude attempt to disguise the camps and their aims on the country's online map programme.

 

More than 250 newly-built compounds across Xinjiang region appear on western map services. 

 

However, China has been wiping Xinjiang concentration camps from online maps, in a shameful bid to cover up the horrors of its regime towards the peaceful Uighur community.

 

Maps on its Baidu search engine no longer show the locations of these harrowing death camps. Since 2016 China has been detaining the Uighur Muslim minority in a self-titled counter-terrorism initiative, according to the Daily Express. 

 

The initiative, that many see as demographic genocide and state terrorism, has resulted in the incarceration of an estimated 1.5 million Uighur men, women, and children.

 

Plain light gray tiles have been placed over the locations of death camps in the vast region of Xinjiang, BuzzFeed News has reported.

 

They found "at zoom level 18" on the Baidu maps blank grey tiles appeared over the locations that were known to have concentration camps for the Uighur Muslim minority.

 

The researchers concluded every time a blank grey tile appeared on the online maps, it most likely covered up one of the networks of concentration camps in the western region of China.

 

The team then compared the same locations on other online maps taken by satellites from Google Earth, the European Space Agency’s Sentinel Hub, and Planet Labs.

 

They discovered there were 5 million grey tiles across the Xinjiang region, deliberately blocking any area that had "the slightest strategic importance".

 

After ruling out many locations of suspected military installations, power plants or other areas that the Chinese regime would not wish to reveal, the team came up with around 50,000 locations that could be possible sites of concentration camps.

 

They have networks of newly constructed roads leading towards high concrete perimeter walls, with the buildings "built to last".  - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/29 August 2020 - - -