By Jared Harris, WESTERN JOURNALISM
A woman who escaped a Chinese “reeducation” camp gave a damning testimony that makes it clear the shocking lengths the country’s regime will go to force communist values on its people.
Sayragul Sauytbay spoke to Haaretz about her time in the Chinese camps. Although she had a position that allowed her some minor comforts, she witnessed many of the horrors there firsthand.
Sauytbay and her family lived in Xinjiang province, in the remote northwest reaches of China. The province is home to the Uighurs, a minority ethnic group that Sauytbay belongs to.
Although many in the region dream of independence, there is a very small number who actually commit violence to achieve it. For this, the Chinese government is now engaged in a clandestine campaign to wipe the entire culture from the face of the earth.
Concentration camps, officially ignored by the Chinese until their existence was proven, are now billed as vocational schools to help combat extremism. It doesn’t take much to end up in one, either — simply having a picture of a foreign movie star on your phone can be grounds for detention.
Being ethnic Uighurs, Sauytbay and her family saw the writing on the wall. While her husband and children were able to escape to neighboring Kazakhstan, she was not. When the government finally decided she needed to be imprisoned, her background as an educator saved her from the worst the camps had to offer.
After refusing to lure her family back to China, Sauytbay was taken to a camp in 2017 and told she would be teaching the prisoners the Chinese language.
While her position allowed her a concrete bed inside of a tiny room, less fortunate inmates were crammed into tight quarters with only a plastic bucket to serve as a toilet.
Sauytbay would teach the prisoners Chinese songs and communist slogans. People in the camp were expected to learn the foreign tongue under threat of torture. It didn’t matter to the authorities that the prisoners were expected to do this while living under horrific conditions.
“The food was bad, there weren’t enough hours for sleep and the hygiene was atrocious,” Sauytbay told Haaretz. “The result of it all was that the inmates turned into bodies without a soul.”
Punishments administered at the camp are shockingly brutal, painting a strikingly different picture of the China that NBA millionaires have recently defended.
“There were all kinds of tortures there,” Sauytbay said. “Some prisoners were hung on the wall and beaten with electrified truncheons. There were prisoners who were made to sit on a chair of nails. I saw people return from that room covered in blood. Some came back without fingernails.”
Inmates are also seemingly used for medical testing.
Pills and injections are given to prisoners with varying effects. Some people who were actually sick were not issued any medicine at all. Sauytbay was warned in secret by nurses at the facility to not take any pills she was given.
Sauytbay kept her head down and simply taught Chinese. In 2018, she was suddenly released from prison and told to keep quiet. She went back to her job as a director over several preschools.
She was soon fired, interrogated and accused of treason. Sauytbay was then told she needed to begin training her replacement.
The article leaves out the fact that this ethic minority is Muslim.
“Although many in the region dream of independence, there is a very small number who actually commit violence to achieve it.”
I.e., that tiny minority of extremists in an otherwise peaceful religion. Bad faith from the author? There is more to the story. The implied analogy with the Holocaust is bogus.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Hi, Adam
Various Chinese empires have ruled over Xinjiang (where Uighurs are the plurality), on and off, since the time of the Roman Empire. Since this gives something of a parallel with Israel’s history, I can see how many Jews would uphold their cause. Even so, there’s little for the US, should they choose to help the Uighurs.
Hong Kong is another matter. HK is the door to good US-China relations; and President Xi is shooting himself in the foot, in his attempts to bully her around. The residents there are also very pro-US; helping them is a win-win situation.
The U.S. should end all trade with China and freeze all Chinese assets, at least until American inspection teams are able to verify that all the concentration camps have been closed down, all of the efforts to stamp out Uighur culture have ended, and the destroyed Uighur neighborhoods and towns have been rebuilt. Also, that the repression in Hong Kong is ended, the Dalai Lama and the other Tebetan refugees are allowed to return with no reprisals from the Chinese regime, the destroyed Tibetan temples rebuilt, etc. China is the world’s number two human rights violator after Noth Korea. Time the U.S. cracked down on this regime.
Although Trump is negotiating with North Korea, he has not dropped sanctions on it. The same approach should be adopted vis a vis China.