New documents have been leaked on the persecution and abuse of thousands of Muslims of China's minority Uighur community. They show that personal information, down to every detail of daily life, has been kept on more than 3,000 citizens in the country's western region of Xinjiang.

The 137-page document uses separate columns and tables on each page to record in detail how many times these people pray, what they wear, whom they contact and how members of their families behave.

The Chinese government, however, denies the allegations and says these are part of measures taken to tackle terrorism and religious extremism in the country.

The documents were collected at great personal risk. They are said to have come through the same source in Xinjiang that provided a large quantity of government papers last year.

Dr Adrian Zenz, an expert on Chinese policy in Xinjiang and a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, believes the leaked documents are genuine.

"These documents are the strongest evidence I have seen so far of how the Chinese government is punishing people for their religious beliefs and practice."

One of the camps named in the documents is the "Number Four Training Centre", which a BBC team visited in May last year on a tour of Xinjiang organised by the Chinese government.

Much of what the BBC team found then is borne out by the new documents. At the time, the BBC edited out a great deal of information for the safety of many people there.

The new documents contain the results of wide-ranging investigations into 311 members of the Uighur minority: their past history, their daily routines of religious practice, and details of their contacts with relatives, neighbours and friends.

Source: BBC Bangla. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.