Chapter 13 The Suppression of Xinjiang (2)

The Communist Party of China (CCP) has implemented cultural cleansing in its “re-education camps” by destroying ethnic and religious beliefs, forcing detainees to sing red songs, eat pork and drink alcohol. They “thank President Xi” for their meals, and chant “Long live President Xi” before eating. “On February 3, 2018, the BBC reported that Abdurrahman Aishan, a businessman from Kashgar whose mother was a 68-year-old retired teacher and wife with two children, was put into a re-education camp in Shufan County Kashgar Region at the end of July 2017. The punishment for disobedience was to put the guilty one on a wooden bench and was made to fast from morning to night. The businessman said, “I would rather love my wife and mother to be shot than have them abused to death by the Chinese Communist government.”

On May 15, 2018, Radio Free Asia interviewed a police officer by phone at a police station in Hotan district and asked him about the living conditions in the concentration camp. The police officer replied that 70 people were living in a room of 50-70 square meters, sleeping on double bunk beds with wooden planks.

In May 2019, Sanli News reported that a Kazakh journalist infiltrated into Xinjiang for a secret interview and learned that in the camps, husband and wife lived separately and could only see each other only once after a few months; before meeting, they had to take birth control pills, special drugs were added to the food so that men’s genitals could not get an erection and the women stopped menstruating; those who were pregnant when they entered the camps were forced to abort.

In August 2019, Xinjiang fugitive Li Xin (Han Chinese) reported that Han Chinese detainees were treated similarly; her family was held in a cell of less than 10 square meters with ethnic minorities; the cell was windowless, monitored by three cameras 24 hours a day; she was not allowed to speak; she was subjected to daily thought reform; if she spoke or if someone reported, she was sent to a corporal punishment room; some were hung, handcuffed and hung from a height and were beaten up with whips. Others were electrocuted, being made to sit on a tiger stool and forced to confess.

On August 5, 2020, the BBC reported that a man from Xinjiang, Maidan Aba, was imprisoned who later on described in a WeChat message his experience of spending 18 days in a police station with more than 50 people handcuffed and hooded.

On February 3, 2021, the BBC reported that many women in Xinjiang’s re-education camps were raped, sexually abused and tortured and some were forced to undergo sterilization. Some media reported that hundreds of people had died in six months in camps in the Aksu region as well as rumored that the mother of prominent religious figure Muhammad Saleh al-Hajj and World Uyghur Congress President Dorikun Aisha, Ayhan al-Bayati, had died.

After completing trials of detainees in Xinjiang’s re-education camps, some were sent in batches to the mainland for further re-education. On September 29, 2018, Radio Free Asia interviewed staff of the Heilongjiang, Tailai County CPPCC, who confirmed that a group of people had been transferred from Xinjiang to Tailai prison more than 20 days ago.