Backlink: ALJAZEERA

Istanbul, Turkey – Abdullah Abduzayir has not heard from his family for nearly seven years.

The 14-year-old is one of the hundreds of Uighur children in Istanbul whose parents are caught up in the growing repression of the Uighur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region, in the far northwest of China. Many Uighurs refer to this area as East Turkestan.