A girl named Mihrigul Tursun spoke at the US Congress. She is a former inmate of the Xinjiang Vocational Training and Development Center in China. At least that's what the Chinese authorities call these institutions. But judging by the testimony of Tursun, the place where she was periodically imprisoned over the past three years against her own will and without any reason looks more like a concentration camp.
A Facebook user in a long and shocking poster told the story of Mihrigul Tursun, an ethnic Uyghur who was born in China. Over the past ten years, information has been received from the PRC that people of Muslim origin are being repressed there and exiled to camps. Mihrigul's statements to Congress on November 28 describe the situation as if it were indeed the case.
The Chinese authorities describe the camps in Xinjiang as centers for vocational training and development, and insist that people come there of their own free will. State television broadcasts reports in which students sit in clean classrooms, study the Chinese language and legal disciplines. Despite the fact that all the people in the institution are of Muslim origin, none of the women are wearing hijab, which means, most likely, that the schools have a certain dress code.
But the reality described by Mihrigul bears little resemblance to the picture given by the authorities. In China, a special attitude towards representatives of Muslim origin, in particular to the Uyghurs. They are trying to deprive people of this nationality of their identity and force them to abandon their traditional way of life. The people's loyalty to family or faith should not, in the opinion of the authorities, be placed above the loyalty of the Chinese Communist Party.
There is a special regime for Uighurs in Xinjiang. To move from one block to another or buy food - that is, to do the usual routine things - they need to go through several checkpoints. Uighurs can easily be stopped on the street to search the police. Face recognition cameras are installed on all streets, and the state closely monitors every person.
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Mikhrigul Tursun was born in East Turkestan (officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China). At the age of 12, she was sent to school in Guangzhou, away from her native places, in order to try to eradicate the girl's craving for language and culture. After school, Mihrigul graduated from the University of Guangzhou, started working for an international company and left for Egypt. There she met her future husband, and then gave birth to triplets from him. And then, in 2015, Tursun wanted to return to China.
The problems started already at the airport. The girl was arrested almost immediately and the children were taken away from her. In the interrogation room of Mihrigul, they tried to find out with whom she met in Egypt and what she did there. She was suspected of espionage, and after that the life of the Uyghur turned into hell.
Since 2015, the girl has been detained three times. She was shaved bald, tortured, sent to a psychiatric clinic, and detained. One of the children of Mihrigul died almost immediately after returning to China, and, as it seems to the mother, experiments were carried out on the other two. Tursun was not able to return to Egypt because the police took her passport from her. In January 2018, the girl was detained for the last time.
Mihrigul was stripped and placed in a giant computerized machine. After the examination, she was given a robe with number 54, the number assigned to especially dangerous criminals in China. The girl was told that the number means "I am a dead man" and those who bear this stigma have only two ways: either life imprisonment or death.
After that, Tursun was sent to a tiny underground cell without windows, where forty other women were already. All prisoners were educated professionals - doctors, teachers, and engineers. Due to the size of the room, the prisoners had to sleep in turns: at least ten or fifteen people were forced to stand. They changed every two hours. Cameras were installed around the perimeter of the room, and warders monitored every step of the women.
All inmates were given a week to learn the camp routines and two weeks to memorize a book on communist ideology. One of the essential points was the glorification of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Before breakfast, which consisted of water and some rice, we had to sing songs praising the Chinese Communist Party and repeat these lines in Chinese:“Long live Xi Jinping!” and "Condescension to the repentant and punishment to those who resist."
Not everyone survived the conditions of detention in the camp, torture and experiments. Tursun said that women were forced to take pills of unknown origin and a strange white liquid. After these medications, people lost their ability to think and bleed. Some were dying. During the three months that Mihrigul spent in prison, nine people died. According to the girl, the worst thing was at night, when the warders dragged bodies out of the cells or shuffled prisoners between rooms.
“The most terrible days came when inmates died before my eyes. The nights in the camp were always very busy - people were moved between cells and dead bodies were taken out."
Throughout her imprisonment, Mihrigul was tortured in an attempt to extract confessions of espionage from her. The girl was asked the same questions in a circle: what did she do abroad, who does she know there, which organization financed her. Since Tursun was not involved in any political activities abroad, she had no answer. So she was tortured with electric current through her whole body, beaten and psychologically intimidated.
The torture did not lead to the desired effect, so they decided to release Mihrigul. She was told that she could take her children to Egypt, but after that the girl had to return to China. Before leaving the camp, the prisoner was injected with an unknown substance. She was forced to sign a statement, the text of which also had to be read on camera.
“I am a Chinese citizen and I love China. I will never do anything bad to China. China raised me. The police never detained, tortured or interrogated me."
After that, Tursun left China for the United States, since September the girl has been living in Virginia. On November 28, she addressed Congress detailing the contents of the "re-education school." After her speech, a dead silence reigned in the hall, interrupted only by the sobbing of Mihrigul. When one of the senators asked the girl if she felt safe while in the States, she could not answer positively. Tursun said she still notices herself being followed by people of Chinese appearance and asked to do something to shield her and other Uighurs from what is happening in the camps in Xinjiang.
Zhanna Karamazova