Pompeo Meets Uyghurs, Demands End To Detentions

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday renewed demands that Beijing end its widespread detention of Uyghur Muslims as he met a survivor and relatives of prisoners.

"We call on the Chinese government to release immediately these individuals' family members and all others arbitrarily detained in the camps," the State Department said in a statement on Pompeo's meeting.

The top US diplomat on Tuesday met Mihrigul Tursun, a Uyghur who has spoken publicly in the United States about what she said was widespread torture in China's prisons for the minority group.

She has said she was separated from her children and detained in a cramped cell with 60 other women, suffering electrocution and beatings during round-the-clock interrogations.

The State Department said that Pompeo also met three other Uyghur whose relatives are detained by Beijing, which according to a UN report has detained a massive one million Uighurs as it seeks forcibly to integrate the minority group.

Pompeo, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, said that "certainly" at least hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs had been detained.

"We're working to convince the Chinese that this practice is abhorrent and ought to be stopped," Pompeo said.

China denies the accounts of mass detention, saying it is running educational training centres as part of a fight against Islamic extremism in Xinjiang. (AFP)