Two Xinjiang women who spent part of their lives in China’s ‘re-education’ camps for Uyghurs have told US lawmakers of imprisonment, surveillance, rape and torture.
According to the Associated Press news agency, a special committee of the US House of Representatives on China is focusing on human rights violations there.
Qalvinur Siddique, a member of China’s ethnic Uzbek minority who was forced to teach Chinese in separate detention centers for Uyghur men and women, told the committee that Uyghur male prisoners were shackled and shackled. And when the authorities call them, they have to crawl. They were called by numbers for questioning. And then you hear horrible screams of violence.’
He said that thousands of innocent female Uyghur prisoners were dressed in gray uniforms and had their heads shaved.
They said the guards gave the women electric shocks and gang-raped them, sometimes both. “I have seen a girl between 18 and 20 years who was bleeding during treatment.”
Gulbahar Hativaji, another Uyghur woman who spent more than two years in these camps in China, told the committee that the purpose of re-education camps is to deprive Uyghur prisoners of their language, religious beliefs and customs, men and women. The women were forced to study ’11 hours of brainwashing lessons on a daily basis.’
Describing his time in these camps, Hativaji said, “Before eating, we had to praise them, say we are grateful to the Communist Party of China and we are grateful to President Xi Jinping.” And after finishing the meal, we had to praise them again.’
A Uyghur woman arrested for spreading ‘disorder’ said she was kept with 30 to 40 others in a cell that was designed for only nine people. She and other female prisoners were kept in their beds for up to 20 days at one point.
During this period of detention, the woman gave up but in 2019, thanks to a pressure campaign by her family there, she was released and sent to France.
According to the woman, before the release, the Chinese authorities increased the amount of food so that their health and appearance would not indicate that the prisoners were kept in poor conditions.
According to Hetiwaji, “at the time of release, the Chinese authorities warned that the family would be harmed if the details of the time spent in the camp were revealed.”
The United States and many other governments, the United Nations and human rights groups accuse China of holding a million or more people from its own Uyghur community and other Muslim ethnic minority groups in concentration camps, from which they cannot escape. Many said they were tortured, sexually assaulted, and forced to abandon their language and religion.
China denies the allegations, which are backed up by satellite images of the camps and interviews with those released.
According to Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, “For a long time, some American politicians have repeatedly used Xinjiang-related issues to fuel rumors and engage in political manipulation under the pretext of human rights, so as to China’s global face can be tarnished and the country’s development can be stopped.
According to the spokesman, the “Chinese government’s action” in Xinjiang is being carried out to prevent violence, terrorism, extremism and separatism.