A group of 20 Uighurs lingered uncertainly after a human rights talk in Sydney this week. While they clearly wanted to speak out about their plight, they were scared.

All of them, according to their de facto spokesman, Mehmet Celepci, live in Australia but have relatives they believe are among a million Uighurs being held in detention camps in China's western province of Xinjiang. And they are afraid that if they speak publicly about the issue it could worsen their families' situations. Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim ethnic group that has been caught up in a brutal security crackdown in China.