Only four Muslim adults remain in 30 households on one of the alleys in a Xinjiang village; the rest are detained in camps.
Since this spring, at least 60 individuals from a village in Manas County of the Changji prefecture in Xinjiang have been apprehended by authorities, one of whom was persecuted to death while in custody; others were detained in transformation through education camps.
At approximately 3 a.m. on March 17, 2018, the Changji Prefecture and Manas County Public Security Bureaus teamed up with the local town police station and arrested 27 Muslim women from a village for “illegal assembly,” including 49-year-old Zu Gege, who was released after being held for 20 days, then arrested again 10 days later. The second time she was arrested, she was detained for one month, and at the end of May, Zu Gege’s family received news that she had passed away.
Local government employees claim that Zu Gege got sick, and was sent to a hospital, where she passed away after doctors failed to resuscitate her. Zu Gege’s family was unwilling to accept that a healthy woman before the arrest had died so suddenly and refused to bury her before clarifying all the detail of her death. The local government promised the son of the deceased that they would honor all their requests after the burial, however soon after breaking the promise, claiming no responsibility. To date, the family of the deceased has not received any comprehensive explanation about the cause of her death.
Gu Sili (pseudonym) one of the 27 arrested women, like Zu Gege, was detained for 20 days and again apprehended ten days later, after which she was sentenced to 7 months in prison and remains in custody to date. Her mother-in-law said that Gu Sili’s arrest had destroyed the whole family: her son is so distraught that he cannot carry out work, and his daughter had to quit her good job and come back home and take over her father’s position as a driver to keep the family afloat. “Gu Sili was arrested just for studying the Quran at home, she committed no crime,” said the distraught mother-in-law.
Among the arrested was the Imam of a local mosque named Mr. Ma, over 50-years-old, as well as his wife with late-stage breast cancer. According to an inside source, county-and-prefecture-level public security officers burst into the Imam’s home in the middle of the night, ransacked the place, and confiscated all of the Qurans in his possession. Mr. Ma was later locked up in the Manas County Detention Center, while his wife was sent to a transformation through education camp established on the second floor of the County People’s Hospital. The couple remains in detention to date.
A total of 30 households live along the Huis’ Alley in the village; currently, only four adults remain there, the rest have been sent to transformation through education camps. As one of the locals said, “The Chinese communist government is turning all of Xinjiang into a giant prison.”
Source: Direct reports from China