Abdurahman Hasan has had no contact with his wife in more than five years. Hasan left Xinjiang in 2017 for business reasons and realized he could not return because of the escalating threats to the Uyghur community. Left behind was his wife. Her name is Tunsagul Nurmemet. Hasan had feared his wife was dead. But when he looked at secret files from Chinese authorities tracking Uyghurs, he saw her face. "She looks destroyed," he said. Nurmemet is one of thousands believed to be held in arbitrary detention in hundreds of internment camps across Xinjiang where human rights groups say detainees are subjected to physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Journalists from various outlets, including USA TODAY, independently reviewed a massive trove of leaked records and verified portions of the contents, which experts say offer an unprecedented look inside China's detention and internment of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities. The files include more than 5,000 photos of Uyghur people taken at police facilities. U.S.-based China researcher Adrian Zenz, who initially obtained the files from a hacker, concluded thousands of those people were held in detention at the time the photos were taken in 2018. The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority who live in what China refers to as the Xinjiang region, but which some Uyghurs call East Turkestan. There are an estimated 12 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which shares a border with Pakistan, Kazakhstan and other countries. The U.S. State Department's annual human rights report, released in April, said that officials in Xinjiang expanded internment camps for Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in 2021. To read more, click the link in our bio. 🎥: Megan Smith for USA TODAY