Shahid Afridi first requests Imran Khan to speak on Uyghur issue, then deletes tweet

In his tweet, Shahid said: "Hearing of atrocities committed against the #UighurMuslims is heartbreaking. I request @ImranKhanPTI to speak up against this; talk of uniting the Muslim ummah includes our brothers & sisters in China too. @CathayPak is requested to address the humane & just treatment of Muslims."

However, he deleted the tweet later. The reason is not known.

With China a big ally of Pakistan in economic projects and in its international diplomacy against India, Imran Khan has feigned ignorance about the mass detention of Uyghurs.

He skirted the issue when asked by international media and said he has not much knowledge about the issue.

The US has earlier criticised Imran Khan for not highlighting the plight of the Uyghurs the same way he spoke about the Kashmiris.

An investigation had recently dismissed China's claim that detention camps built across Turkic Muslim, also known as Uyghurs, majority region Xinjiang are built for re-education purposes to counter extremism.

The leaked papers have revealed the systematic way in which the Beijing government is brainwashing hundreds of thousands of Muslims in a network of high-security prison camps.

The Chinese government has consistently claimed the camps in the far western Xinjiang region offer voluntary education and training.

Official documents were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) which has worked with 17 media partners globally.

The leaked Chinese government documents, which the ICIJ have labelled 'The China Cables', include a nine-page memo sent out in 2017 by Zhu Hailun, then deputy-secretary of Xinjiang's Communist Party and the region's top security official, to those who run the camps.