It is not about “re-education” only. Prisoners in the camps are routinely murdered.
by Alexandra Cavelius and Sayragul Sauytbay*
*Adapted and summarized for Bitter Winter from the forthcoming English translation by Victoria Graham of “China Protokolle, Vernichtungsstrategien der KPCh im größten Überwachungsstaat der Welt” (China Log: Annihilation Strategies of the CCP in the World’s Largest Surveillance State, Munich: Europa Verlag, 2021).
For the first time, a respected scholar in his community is coming out about his experiences in a camp complex so large it’s terrifying. Hidden between high mountains, supposedly 100,000 prisoners are locked up just east of the Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi. Until now, it was believed that the largest camps were built for 10,000 inmates.
This academic managed to flee to a European country with his wife. Only after some convincing by politically influential Uyghurs did he finally agree to talk. The elderly couple were afraid of reprisals from the Chinese government.
Both tell their stories openly but have requested that detailed descriptions be omitted that could lead to their identification. Otherwise, they are afraid it would put their children’s lives in mortal danger back home.
“The CCP is looking for us everywhere,” the older gentleman says knowingly, and insists on anonymity. During the interviews, he identified himself with documents and photos.
Even though this couple is very frightened, it is extremely important to them that the injustices at home come to light. Torn apart, their family is severely scarred from their experiences at camps, both physically and mentally. The man is witness to countless murders of his people.
This man reveals that the magnitude of the cruelty is even greater than imagined.
“I am a person who respects everyone, no matter where they are from or how much they own. That is the way I was raised. I belonged to a group of scholars from my city, was in my sixties, and despite my mature age, was still very active in my field.
The CCP spies have not found out yet in which country we are hiding, but they are searching for us everywhere. If they were to find my name in this article, they would immediately kill our children back home.
I was never interested in politics, never caused any trouble, yet they destroyed me all the same. In 2016 we sent some of our children to study in Turkey, because they could live more freely and safely there. At the time Chinese officials were ordering all Uyghurs to apply for a passport. Anyone who did not want a passport was considered hostile, was told ‘You are against the government!’ and locked up for 15 to 20 days. Therefore, many Muslims thought they were free to travel from then on.
In the end, however, it was precisely these trips abroad that served as a reason for the cadres to imprison us afterwards. Simultaneously, they sentenced thousands who had not traveled abroad despite their passports, accusing them, ‘Your behavior is suspicious. You must be planning an attack!’ These people got 20 years or life imprisonment.
A neighboring family consisting of 84 people and spanning three generations emigrated to Turkey and never came back. That was very prudent of them because they would have otherwise been arrested upon returning home.
My wife and I, however, fell right into their trap. We had traveled to Turkey in 2016 for our daughter’s wedding, and flew back home when it was over. Barely one year later they used this trip against us in numerous interrogations. ‘Why were you in Turkey? You are foreign spies!’ The government closed the border in 2017. We could no longer leave the country.
On October 2, 2017, three policemen stormed into our villa around midnight. We were rich people and had a magnificent garden. One police officer blared, ‘Where are you?’, and the next minute I had a black cloth bag over my head.
They led my wife away separately. With our feet and hands handcuffed like criminals, they interrogated both of us non-stop for days in different places. ‘Why were you in Turkey?’ Again and again, I answered that my daughter got married there. ‘Tell us the truth! Why did you go to Turkey?’ They were like a broken record. (…)
The fact that the cadres did not kill us all at once probably had something to do with the logistics involved in mass killings. They are simply not able to dispose of millions of corpses all at once.
The entire extermination network is well planned. First, they divide everyone up based on the severity of their crimes. If a prisoner was smart enough to say something like ‘No one is more powerful than the CCP’ during his interrogation, they let him die in the second round.
If, however, you were dumb enough to question their policies, such as ‘What did I do? I’m not breaking the law, you are! It’s not fair!’ you were killed right away.
The candidates they choose to die are ordered out of the cell. ‘Go to your medical checkup!’ was one excuse used, for example. The guards bring them back a few hours later or that same evening, completely limp, half unconscious, and barely able to speak. Some were still able to spit out that they had received a shot. ‘They’re killing us with it…’
When they were picked up, they were regular persons who could still walk. When they came back from these ‘medical checkups,’ usually two or three hours later, their eyes rolled back into their head, and they gasped for air one last time. They must have been right about it being a lethal injection because we couldn’t see any signs of torture.
Every day they called five or six people out of the cell. Some of them were brought back after their interrogation. Sometimes only one came back, and sometimes none of them. We never heard another word about the ones that ‘disappeared.’ Meanwhile the guards filled the resulting vacancies with new arrivals or exchanged six prisoners for inmates from other cells, so that the total always remained the same. This way no one could say exactly how many people they had killed in the end.
While we were pretending to sleep at night, we listened anxiously to new prisoners telling us information about the other cells. We found out how people elsewhere were being killed. ‘Have you heard?’ Every night our cell was filled with sounds of rattling gasps, coughs, and wheezes, but also with murmuring about the dead. ‘That guy died today, that one died yesterday, and the other one…’ We did not know their names, only their numbers.
Perhaps this was our attempt to keep the memory of the dead alive. Although it was strictly forbidden to talk to each other, we had quickly learned to exchange ideas without moving a muscle in our faces. At a certain point, you didn’t even care if you were dead or alive (…)
During my fifth interrogation they beat me so hard on my back that one of my lungs ripped. I don’t know what happened after that, but when I woke up after lying unconscious in the cell, I couldn’t stop spitting blood. I lost about two liters of blood. My heart beat irregularly and my pulse was racing. ‘Get him to a doctor!’ the guards snarled. Through the cloth hood, I saw a large concrete area outside. I couldn’t see a tree for miles. There were several long, two-story buildings in a row.
The guards gave each of us a good whack with a stick before loading me and 15 to 20 other seriously injured people into a minibus.
Crammed in side by side, we stood there, our hands cuffed to the ceiling. The air was so stuffy that we all thought we would suffocate before reaching our destination.
Some fainted and dangled lifelessly from the chains. There were no windows, only a small round hole with frosted glass. We must have been driving for fifteen minutes. I am sure we did not leave the camp because there were no stops and no gates. So, I estimate we covered around five miles within the same compound.
First, they almost beat you to death, then they took you to a medical examination. To the outside world, the employees in the camp seemed to follow the rules exactly. That way they could maintain the appearance that these crimes had their order. They were good citizens who only did what the state asked them to do.
Their orders were to kill as many prisoners as possible in a short time.
Killing us all at once probably would have been not only a logistical problem, but also more difficult for the government to justify to the outside world. They killed top-priority prisoners immediately, while others were tortured so severely that they either died still in custody or soon after release.
I met an old man in the hospital who was extremely sick, yet they had not assigned him a bed. He had been receiving IVs for a week while chained with his hands and feet to a chair. He had to shout when he wanted to pee. At some point two police officers appeared, hit him over the head, and said, ‘Now you can pee, old man!’
In my case, they gave me medication, but the doctors stated, ‘The tear in his lung is much too big, we can’t treat it here,’ and advised the police officers, ‘Take him to a lung specialist in Urumqi, otherwise he will die here.’
For some reason, they didn’t want me to die there yet, because they actually admitted me into the recommended hospital, where the doctors managed to stop the bleeding. For three days I was unconscious. When I woke up, I could hear senior doctors and police officers talking to each other in the room. ‘Oh, he’s so old, he’ll die soon anyway. He doesn’t have longer than six months.’ The person in front of him replied, ‘Then what’s the use of bringing him back to the camp? We can just let him out.’
That was the only reason they released me. They were sure I wasn’t going to survive. I had to pay for the treatment myself afterwards.”