Alongside cells, another central feature of the camps is classrooms. "I don't know how to explain to you, I thought they were torturing her. Uighur internment camp survivor reveals China's horrifying 're-education' tactics Benjamin Hall 2/6/2021. Women in China's "re-education" camps for Uighurs have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured, according to detailed new accounts obtained by the BBC. She is applying to stay. Most information about the camps, and a wider government campaign against Muslim minorities in the region, has come from survivors who have fled abroad, leaked Chinese government documents, and satellite images that have confirmed the location and existence of camps. Then sometime in May 2018 - "I don't remember the exact date, because you don't remember the dates inside there" - Ziawudun and a cellmate, a woman in her twenties, were taken out at night and presented to a Chinese man in a mask, she said. Many in the community had turned to alcohol, Ziawudun said. On 9 March 2018, with her husband still in Kazakhstan, Ziawudun was instructed to report to a local police station, she said. “The evidence in this database shows that despite Chinese officials’ claims about detainees graduating from the camps, significant investment in the construction of new detention facilities has continued throughout 2019 and 2020,” said ASPI researcher Nathan Ruser. "You can't tell anyone what happened, you can only lie down quietly," she said. Leaked China Files Show Internment Camps Are Ruled by Secrecy and Spying A secret document reflects leaders’ struggle to manage Xinjiang sites swelling with Muslim detainees. Uighur families have been forced to have Han Chinese officials living in their homes as “relatives”, part of a comprehensive surveillance system, that also sees people monitored online, and through a wide network of CCTV cameras in public places. The women were told to hand over their shoes and any clothes with elastic or buttons, Ziawudun said, then taken to cellblocks - "similar to a small Chinese neighbourhood where there are rows of buildings". Those who were brought back were threatened against telling others in the cell what had happened to them. "They don't only rape but also bite all over your body, you don't know if they are human or animal," she said, pressing a tissue to her eyes to stop her tears and pausing for a long time to collect herself. ASPI said nighttime images were particularly useful, as they looked for areas that were newly illuminated outside towns; often these were the sites of freshly built detention centres, with daytime images giving a clear picture of construction. '", That night Sedik didn't sleep at all, she said. "I asked her, 'I have been hearing some terrible stories about rape, do you know about it?' However, China has not allowed journalists, human rights groups or diplomats independent access to the camps, and visitors to the region face heavy surveillance. A camp doctor told her she might have a blood clot. That left "no real constraints", he said. She said she believed that if she revealed the extent of the sexual abuse she had experienced and seen, and was returned to Xinjiang, she would be punished more harshly than before. Sometime after midnight, they came to the cells to select the women they wanted and took them down the corridor to a "black room", where there were no surveillance cameras. 1.5 million Muslims are held in these internment camps, getting beat, Murdered, because China’s communist regime claims the detentions are “… to help a small group of people who are eroded by terrorist and extremist thoughts to return to their right thoughts…” Internal documents from the Kunes county justice system from 2017 and 2018, provided to the BBC by Adrian Zenz, a leading expert on China's policies in Xinjiang, detail planning and spending for "transformation through education" of "key groups" - a common euphemism in China for the indoctrination of the Uighurs. Human Rights Watch claims that they have been used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other Muslims since 2017 as part of a "people's waron terror," a policy announced in 2014. If reports are to be believed, women in China's 're-education' camps for Uighurs have been subjected to systematic rape, sexually abuse, and torture. It is gang rape and the Chinese police not only rape them but also electrocute them. "There were many people in those cells who lost their minds.". Ziawudun has spoken to the media before, but only from Kazakhstan, where she "lived in constant fear of being sent back to China", she said. According to Ziawudun, each cell was home to 14 women, with bunk beds, bars on the windows, a basin and a hole-in-the-floor-style toilet. China Muslim Internment Camps Bbc Education. Reports suggest China has purposefully kept behind and interned relatives to discourage those who leave from speaking out. The ASPI project captures the vast scale of both individual detention camps, and the entire network of internment facilities, mostly thrown up in the last half decade. Ziawudun was released in December 2018 along with others who had spouses or relatives in Kazakhstan - an apparent policy shift she still doesn't fully understand. "They forced me to take off those women's clothes and to restrain their hands and leave the room.". The Associated Press (AP) described China’s internment of Uighurs as a “demographic genocide.” US: China 'committed genocide against Uighurs', Uighur model sends rare video from Chinese detention, China expands its Uighur detention camps - report. Eight may have been decommissioned entirely. And she was ashamed, she said. She saw others who had been churned through the system and released. The US government said last month that China's actions since amounted to a genocide. New construction there over the course of 2019 stretched for more than a kilometre – and in total it now has nearly 100 buildings. Asked if there was a system of organised rape, she said: "Yes, rape. "I just don't see what the perpetrators of these acts would have to hold them back.". In one Kunes document, the "education" process is described as "washing brains, cleansing hearts, strengthening righteousness and eliminating evil". But she heard stories, she said - signs and rumours of rape. They definitely experienced various types of torture. Advanced technology has allowed Chinese authorities to construct a total surveillance and mass detention regime, of which other architects of internment camps, such as the Nazis and the Soviets, could only dream. When her cellmates drew attention to the fact that she was bleeding, the guards "replied saying it is normal for women to bleed", she said. She saw the effect the policy was having on her people. After a month she developed stomach ulcers and was released. The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim Turkic minority group that number about 11 million in Xinjiang in north-western China. Beijing insists there are no human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Some former detainees of the camps have described being forced to assist guards or face punishment. President Xi looms large over the camps. "I don't even want these words to spill from my mouth.". Tursunay Ziawudun spent nine months inside China's vast and secretive system of internment camps in the Xinjiang region. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. "I have lost the chance to become a mother," she said. According to new detailed accounts obtained by the BBC, detainees share horrifying stories from inside China's vast and secretive system of internment camps in the Xinjiang region. The camp guards pulled off the woman's headscarf, Ziawudun said, and shouted at her for wearing a long dress - one of a list of religious expressions that became arrestable offences for Uighurs that year. © 2021 BBC. Buses were lined up outside offloading new detainees "non-stop". The Chinese government did not respond directly to questions from the BBC about allegations of rape and torture. “Camps are also often co-located with factory complexes, which can suggest the nature of a facility and highlight the direct pipeline between arbitrary detention in Xinjiang and forced labour,” the report said. Asked if the camp guards used electrocution, he said: "Yes. Her first stint in detention was comparatively easy, she said, with decent food and access to her phone. They use those electrocuting instruments." About half of the 60 facilities which have recently been expanded are higher security, suggesting a shift in the nature of the central government campaign against minorities in Xinjiang. No related posts. "I could hear them during lunch and sometimes when I was in class.". Her cellmate was taken into a separate room. "Perhaps this is the most unforgettable scar on me forever," she said. Read about our approach to external linking. She was so embarrassed that she tried to cover herself with her arms," Ziawudun said. The state returned her passport and she fled to Kazakhstan and then, with the support of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, to the US. "As soon as she went inside she started screaming," Ziawudun said. Remembering the seven heroes who liberated a Japanese internment camp in China. They are subject to horrific torture. All rights reserved. "The screams echoed throughout the building," she said. "They stripped everything off the elderly lady, leaving her with just her underwear. The birth rate in Xinjiang has plummeted in the past few years, according to independent research - an effect analysts have described as "demographic genocide". The U.S. government accuses China of the mass internment of up to 2 million members of mostly Muslim ethnic minority groups in recent years,” Camerota said. His image and slogans adorn the walls; he is a focus of the programme of "re-education". China has built nearly 400 internment camps in Xinjiang region, with construction on dozens continuing over the last two years, even as Chinese authorities said … The line has gone out to implement this policy with great sternness, and that is what is happening." Human rights groups say the Chinese government has gradually stripped away the religious and other freedoms of the Uighurs, culminating in an oppressive system of mass surveillance, detention, indoctrination, and even forced sterilisation. The concentration camps are the most extreme example of China’s inhumane policies against the Uighurs, but the entire population is subject to repressive policies. About an hour later, her cellmate was brought back. "I have those confessions in my heart," he said. "I entered those camps. A paradox characterizes China’s mass internment camps in Xinjiang. ASPI has divided the camps into four different categories, reflecting levels of fortification and controls on inmates. Her husband's passport was returned and he went back to Kazakhstan to work, but authorities kept Ziawudun's, trapping her in Xinjiang. One day, Sedik cautiously approached a Chinese camp policewoman she knew. "My job was to remove their clothes above the waist and handcuff them so they cannot move," said Gulzira Auelkhan, crossing her wrists behind her head to demonstrate. Tursunay Ziawudun, who fled Xinjiang after her release and is now in the US, said women were removed from the cells "every night" and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. Detainees had food withheld for infractions such as failing to accurately memorise passages from books about Xi Jinping, according to a former camp guard who spoke to the BBC via video link from a country outside China. China says reports of mass detention and forced sterilisation are "lies and absurd allegations". Then police began interrogating Ziawudun about her absent husband, she said, knocking her on the floor when she resisted and kicking her in the abdomen. The men always wore masks, Tursunay Ziawudun said, even though there was no pandemic then. Teachers have been drafted in to "re-educate" the detainees - a process activists say is designed to strip the Uighurs and other minorities of their culture, language and religion, and indoctrinate them into mainstream Chinese culture. Last year a senior official claimed that most people held in camps had “returned to society”. I don't know if they brainwashed us or if it was the side effect of the injections and pills, but you can't think of anything beyond wishing you had a full stomach. These were mostly lower security facilities, the report said. Link copied. The BBC also interviewed a Kazakh woman from Xinjiang who was detained for 18 months in the camp system, who said she was forced to strip Uighur women naked and handcuff them, before leaving them alone with Chinese men. Ziawudun's torture that first night in the dark room eventually came to an end, she said, when the woman intervened again citing her medical condition, and she was returned to the cell. As well as the medical interventions, detainees in Ziawudun's camp spent hours singing patriotic Chinese songs and watching patriotic TV programmes about Chinese President Xi Jinping, she said. "I was thinking about my daughter who was studying abroad and I cried all night.". People have been targeted for “offences” as trivial as owning a Qur’an, or abstaining from eating pork. "There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that this is Xi Jinping's policy.". Her husband is a Kazakh. After being tortured, detainees were forced to make confessions to a variety of perceived offences, according to the guard. Interviews and architectural modeling offer a rare and terrifying view into a massive internment complex. It was unlikely that Xi or other top party officials would have directed or authorised rape or torture, Parton said, but they would "certainly be aware of it". February 5, 2021 by Editorialista Tursenay Ziawudun is a survivor of the secretive Chinese camps where over a million Uighur Muslims have been detained … Editorialista. And that, she said, was the plan. "They didn't spare any part of the body, they bit everywhere leaving horrible marks. “Part of a policy that the U.S. State Department says amounts to genocide. ("We begged them on her behalf," she said.) Mr Zenz told the BBC that the testimony gathered for this story was "some of the most horrendous evidence I have seen since the atrocity began". Several nights, Ziawudun said, they took her. Mary Taylor Previte was … When she first saw women being taken out of the cell at night, she didn't understand why, she said. Some of the women who were taken away from the cells at night were never returned, Ziawudun said. "Then I realised that he was trampling on my belly. China began detaining Uighurs in 2017, according to Human Rights Watch. Later, a woman who slept near Ziawudun in the cell, who said she was detained for giving birth to too many children, disappeared for three days and when she returned her body was covered with the same marks, Ziawudun said. Tursunay Ziawudun spent nine months inside China's vast and secretive system of internment camps in the Xinjiang region. "This confirms the very worst of what we have heard before," he said. She described witnessing a harrowing public gang rape of a woman of just 20 or 21, who was brought before about 100 other detainees to make a forced confession. US accuses China of genocide against Uighurs, China forcing birth control on Uighurs, report says, Searching for truth in China's 're-education' camps, China denies Muslim children separation campaign. She wants her husband to join her in the US. "I've experienced that three times. The information has been made public, including the coordinates for individual camps, in a database that can be accessed online, the Xinjiang Data Project. "Then I would leave the women in the room and a man would enter - some Chinese man from outside or policeman. First-hand accounts from inside the internment camps are rare, but several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture. The planes had brought US soldiers, who soon afterwards liberated Weihsien, an internment camp for 1,500 prisoners in China's Shandong Province. According to independent estimates, more than a million men and women have been detained in the sprawling network of camps, which China says exist for the "re-education" of the Uighurs and other minorities. The guard said he did not know anything about rape in the cell areas. Qelbinur Sedik, an Uzbek woman from Xinjiang, was among the Chinese language teachers brought into the camps and coerced into giving lessons to the detainees. They had an electric stick, I didn't know what it was, and it was pushed inside my genital tract, torturing me with an electric shock.". The Chinese men "would pay money to have their pick of the prettiest young inmates", she said. China has built nearly 400 internment camps in Xinjiang region, with construction on dozens continuing over the last two years, even as Chinese authorities said their “re-education” system was winding down, an Australian thinktank has found. Map – Researchers have mapped more than 380 suspected detention facilities in Xinjiang, Beijing insists there are no human rights abuses. China convicts Uighurs in sham trials at Xinjiang camps More than 1 million Uighurs have disappeared into China's internment camps in Xinjiang province. The woman who had brought them from the cells told the men about Ziawudun's recent bleeding. It was not possible to independently verify the guard's testimony but he provided documents that appeared to corroborate a period of employment at a known camp. Inside China's Muslim internment camps 04:52 The Uighurs of China 19 photos. She lives in a quiet suburb not far from Washington DC with a landlady from the local Uighur community. "I cried so much watching the way they treated her. The woman had been consumed by addiction, Ziawudun said. "And everybody knows it.". China’s mass internment system for Muslims in Xinjiang is so secretive that, despite a growing international outcry, little is known about any one detention camp. Afterwards, she cleaned the rooms, she said. The detainees' hair was cut, they went to class, they underwent unexplained medical tests, took pills, and were forcibly injected every 15 days with a "vaccine" that brought on nausea and numbness. "So I went to the courtyard, where there were not many cameras. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. "They say people are released, but in my opinion everyone who leaves the camps is finished.". The women had their jewellery confiscated. Nothing much happened for the first month or two. "It provides authoritative and detailed evidence of sexual abuse and torture at a level clearly greater than what we had assumed.". The network of camps in China’s far west, used to detain Uighurs and people from other Muslim minorities, include 14 that are still under construction, according to the latest satellite imaging obtained by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. In separate testimony to the Uyghur Human Rights Project, Sedik said she heard about an electrified stick being inserted into women to torture them - echoing the experience Ziawudun described. "You forget to think about life outside the camp. Ziawudun, who is 42, is Uighur. ", "They forced me to go into that room," she said. A map created from the ASPI database shows an arc of camps across the populated parts of the region, though the thinktank noted that the rate of growth in detention facilities was slowing. The camps have been criticized by many countries and human ri… "I felt I had died. "I think they prefer at the top just to turn a blind eye. Your support powers our independent journalism, Available for everyone, funded by readers. I am sure about that.". "Their goal is to destroy everyone," she said. Women were forcibly fitted with IUDs or sterilised, Ziawudun said, including a woman who was just about 20 years old.
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