An ethnic Kazakh from China's northwestern province of Xinjiang who was held in immigration custody in Ukraine for months says he has been released and is on his way to an unspecified Western country.
Chinese citizen Ersin Erkinuly told RFE/RL on March 4 that he was now on the Polish side of the border along with thousands of refugees, mainly women and children, who fled as Russian armed forces continued their attack on Ukraine.
Erkinuly told RFE/RL that there were many foreign nationals among the people who left Ukraine for Poland as refugees.
According to Erkinuly, the Polish side is sheltering refugees in various buildings, including malls, and providing them with food, clothes and other necessities.
SEE ALSO: He Fled From Chinese Camps. Now He's Escaping Russia's War In Ukraine.Ukrainian border guards arrested Erkinuly in October 2020 when he tried to cross into Poland without proper documentation.
He was released from custody in the western city of Lviv in December that year after an appeals court canceled a lower court decision to deport him back to China.
In August 2021, Slovak border guards detained Erkinuly after he attempted to illegally cross the Ukrainian-Slovak border and sent him back to Ukraine, where he was arrested and held in an immigration center in Lviv.
Locked Up In China: The Plight Of Xinjiang's Muslims
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is partnering with its sister organization, Radio Free Asia, to highlight the plight of Muslims living in China's western province of Xinjiang.
Erkinuly has claimed he lost his Chinese passport and that he would face imprisonment and torture if he was sent back to China. Ukrainian authorities eventually granted him refugee status.
In recent years, many Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and members of Xinjiang's other mostly Muslim, indigenous ethnic groups have fled the country, fearing detention.
The U.S. State Department has said that as many as 2 million members of these ethnic groups have been taken to Chinese detention centers.
China denies that the facilities are internment camps, calling them reeducation centers instead.
Kazakhs are the second-largest Turkic-speaking indigenous community in Xinjiang after Uyghurs. The region is also home to ethnic Kyrgyz, Tajiks, and Hui, also known as Dungans.