The Xinjiang re-education camps, officially called Vocational Education and Training Centers by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Government of China are internment camps operated by the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region government and its CCP committee.A spokesman for the regional government responded that it was “outright nonsense”, after raising a question on continuing reports that China has locked in concentration camps more than 1 million ethnic Muslim Uighurs, Kazakhs and others in Xinjiang province.
In the camps, Uyghurs are forced to undergo psychological indoctrination programs as well as physical torture, including waterboarding and sexual abuse.Up to a million people have been torn from their homes and forced to live in “re-education” camps in China because of their religion – with children said to be “locked up like farm animals”.
If so much is “outright nonsense,” then how to explain the barbed wire, guard towers and cement walls that have been rising around Xinjiang, in far western China?
An investigation that identified scores of purpose-built, high-security camps and detention facilities. Previously, eyewitness accounts, government documents and satellite imagery published by scholars and journalists had shown that, since late 2016, China was forcing the Uighurs into a system of incarceration and cultural annihilation.If nonsense, then why do so many eyewitnesses describe an archipelago of prisons and camps aimed at exterminating Uyghur culture, language and traditions?
Tursun,One of the prisoners was born in East Turkistan, also known as Xinjiang, in 1989. She studied in a Chinese school, before moving to Egypt, where she married and gave birth to triplets. Tursun said she returned back to China so her parents could meet her children. But when she arrived at the airport, Tursun said the Chinese police separated her from her children, handcuffed her, put a black sack over her head and questioned her for three hours before taking her to a prison.
“I didn’t know what was happening to my kids,” Tursun said. “They were only 45 days old. They needed to be fed. My kids need me.”Tursun, said she was notified that her children were in the hospital a few days after being taken to a camp. When she arrived at the hospital, she said a doctor told her that all three of her children had an operation on their necks, but prevented her from seeing them.Tursun added that she was then immediately detained by police and taken to a camp for the second time. This time she was questioned by the police, tortured, subjected to electric shock and physically abused for three days.
“While being tortured, I muttered, ‘Oh Allah,’ accidentally, which means ‘help me God,’” Tursun said. “They told me the Chinese Communist Party had more power than Allah. They told me Allah could not save me.”Tursun also talked about the everyday indecencies of the camp. She remembered a white pill she was forced to take every two hours that made her feel numb. The Chinese police only allowed her to drink water after she took the pill, though.She also recounted the room she slept in with 68 other women, which she said was so small the women had to take turns sleeping. Tursun said her feet were tied and her hands were handcuffed to her feet while she slept, which still affects her today.
“Half a million Uyghur Muslim children have been taken away or separated from their parents,Fathers looking for their kids recognize their faces on Chinese state-run propaganda material.The accounts of torture by survivors like Tursun are clear evidence of genocide.There’s been an 80% decrease in Uyghur population growth in three years”!!!
Tursun said she was eventually allowed to return home, but was constantly watched by two Chinese police officers. They lived, slept and ate with her and her family. Tursun said the police told her that if she told her parents about the torture, they would be subjected to the same treatment.After she visited her parents, Tursun was then taken to prison for a third time where she was threatened with life in prison. She said she begged for her young kids to be sent to Egypt and was released to travel with them. But the Chinese government forced her to sign an agreement and film a video saying that she was not tortured in the camps.Tursun eventually sought asylum in the United States, where she lives now. Tursun said her family was forced to denounce her publicly after she left China, so she hasn’t seen or heard from them in years.
Tursun said remembering these details are difficult, causing her to tear up for most of the event.While these camps are located thousands of miles away, Jennifer Murtazashvili, the director of the Center for Governance and Markets, said Pitt administrators can help by sponsoring similar events.
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