A testimony from our “100 Camp Testimonies” Book
My father’s name is Hékim Imin and all my siblings’ family name is Hékim, but since I was registered on my grandfather’s household registry, my family name is Imin. I was born on November 9, 1983 in Qarabagh of Yengisheher township, Korla city, East Turkistan. We are seven siblings: I have three sisters and three brothers, and one of my sisters passed away. My family is in the fruit trading business. I got married on July 17, 2003. I later started an import/export company with two friends in January 2013; as a result, I was able to get a passport and visas to travel for business purposes.
In February 2015, I went to Malaysia, from which we imported a health-promoting beverage that helped ease certain issues with the heart and blood. We sold this beverage from May 2015 to the end of the same year, and the sale went quite well. However, many consumer goods in Malaysia have a halal label affixed to them as Malaysia is a Muslim majority country. On account of the halal label, the beverage was banned in China along with other halal products at the time. In June 2015, I went to Turkey looking for products to import, and we started importing soap and cosmetics from Turkey. I went back to Turkey looking for women’s clothes to import, and I stayed in Turkey for 27 days. On October 22, 2015, I was about to fly to Turkey for the third time, but I was arrested by the police at the airport in Ürümchi.
They made me wait for three or four hours until three Uyghur policemen came, who pulled my jacket up to cover my head and put me in a car. I could not see where I was being taken to. Later I learned that it was the Security Bureau. When we arrived, they strapped me into the tiger chair, a piece of torture equipment, for two days and nights. I was not allowed to talk to a lawyer or anyone else. They didn’t interrogate me. I endured a lot of pain in my hands and feet, but they would not release me from the chair. On the third day, five policemen came: two Han Chinese and three Uyghur officers. They took me to my hometown Korla in a police car. When we arrived in Korla, they took me to a regular hospital for a physical examination, such as blood test, ultrasound, echocardiography, X-ray etc. They put a black hood over my head, but I could see a little bit of what was going on around me. The people around me in the hospital seemed surprised to see me in shackles and my black hood over my head. I thought I would be sent to a prison after the physical exam.
They then took me to a detention center operated by the Bingtuan (新疆生产建设兵团 ‘The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps’), located in Charbagh village right behind a nursing school. The next day, a Monday morning, I was interrogated while strapped into the tiger chair by two Uyghur policemen named Qurban and Tuyghun. They said, “We never take anyone by mistake, so you must tell us whom you met abroad. What activities did you participate in when you were abroad? What activities did you do against China? You have to tell us.” I told them that I never did anything against China, I never met anyone suspicious, and that I was just a regular businessman. I said, “You can check all the products that I am selling.”
In the detention center, we had to sing red songs (hongge 红歌 ‘Chinese patriotic songs’), praising the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). We could even hear people sing these red songs from another, big detention center, the Charbagh detention center, which was about one kilometer away. The detainees were forced to sit in the electric chairs, e.g., I had a cellmate from Yarkent whose hands became all blue caused by this torture equipment. He was brought to the detention center for having listened to an audio recording of some religious content. I saw a young man chained to a block of stone, about 50 x 50 centimeters in size, in the corridor. When I walked past, he begged for his release, and I still cannot forget his plea.
I was not tortured or forced to sit in the electric chair like other detainees because I had all the proof for what I said to them, and I did nothing wrong. They did not find anything incriminating, not even an excuse to punish me. In spite of my innocence, I was still held there for 43 days. On the last day, they took me to the Security Bureau, where they took all my biometric data and samples: They took my fingerprints, blood samples, mug shot (i.e. with one front-view photo, and one side-view), did an eye scan, and recorded my voice as I read something in the newspaper (for voice recognition). They also asked me to sign a document that stated, “I would not complain about the detention.” I was then released from the detention center on December 4, 2015.
After my release, I learned that my brother and brother-in-law had paid more than CN¥118,000 (roughly US$18,521) to someone who claimed that they could help secure my release. Helping the innocent get out of detention had become a new type of business in the region as many were detained. I heard that when rich Uyghur people were detained, they were asked to pay millions of yuan to be released. Apparently, some people did come out after having paid a big sum of money.
On December 27, 2015 I sent my wife, my two children, and my father to Turkey, but I didn’t travel with them. My father came back after one month. The police asked me if I wanted to go abroad again, to which I said, “Yes, for business purposes.” They told me that I must collaborate with them and protect my country—China. They then allowed me go abroad. In January 2016, I went to Turkey and stayed for six months for business purposes, and went back to East Turkistan for a short while, during which time I realized the situation for Uyghurs became more and more tense and serious. I learned that many of my friends had been taken to the internment camps. In September 2016, I went back to East Turkistan again with my wife, one of my daughters, and one of my sons. My eldest son and eldest daughter remained in Turkey. It was at the time of the Eid al-Adha. My wife and I have big families, and we had promised them to go back and visit them from time to time.
We were very happy to see our families, but our joy was short-lived. On the fourth day after we went back to East Turkistan, Guobao (a diminutive of国家政治安全保卫部 ‘the National Political Security’), asked us to meet them. We went to meet them, but they sent my wife home and held me overnight in handcuffs. At the time I met a woman who was in her 50s and also handcuffed. She whispered to me that her daughter’s ex-husband went to Turkey, which constituted grounds for her detention. Her daughter came with her four-year-old son, the police separated them and took her child away. Her daughter was taken to an interrogation room, and we could hear her scream. She must have been around 20 years old. I do not know why she was screaming, but I can never forget that scream.
When they interrogated me, they asked me what business I did in Turkey. I told them everything about my business and later they released me. My friends and family told me that I had to leave the country as soon as possible, so we ended up staying for only 17 days. The Chinese police did not ask me to do anything specific while I was in Turkey, but they did tell me to cooperate with them. When we came back to Turkey, I kept in touch with the policeman Qurban via WeChat, who was the one that asked me to cooperate.
It was around the years 2015 and 2016 that the Chine regime’s mass internment drive really started. When I was still in East Turkistan, one of my brothers was sent to an internment camp for fifteen days initially. At the end of the reeducation program there was a test that required him to praise the CCP and say good things about the Chinese authorities. If an internee fails this test, the internment time would be prolonged. My brother failed that test, so his internment was prolonged to one month. At the time, he had some freedom in the camp. He was able to call us on the telephone, and we could call him as well. They allowed us to bring him fruit and other stuff. I even visited him in the camp once, at which time I asked him why his internment was extended. He said he had to accept that everything he had was thanks to the CCP. My brother was apparently not grateful enough to the CCP.
At long last my brother was released because he showed his gratitude for the CCP and he admitted that he was wrong for praying five times a day and for growing beard. He told me about the life in the camp. The internees were shown the old pictures of the region, and were asked to compare them with the new infrastructures, the purpose of this comparison was to show them that they should be thankful to the CCP for all this progress. They would tell the internees that they were not Turkic people; rather, they were a part of the Chinese history and culture.
In December 2016, I went back to East Turkistan again. I was planning to conclude all my business over there and come back to Turkey for good. At the airport in Ürümchi, the police told me that there was a detention notice issued against me, but they did not detain me there and then. I stayed in a hotel in Ürümchi. I called my father and he told me that the police went to my home in Korla to detain me. I called the police officer Qurban and told him about the detention notice, and he said he would check my ID info in the system. At that time those who had traveled abroad were blacklisted by the Chinese regime. Qurban advised me not to stay in a hotel but rather stay at a friend’s place, which I did. My ID card would set off a warning signal informing the authorities about my position if I used it for example on a bus or a train. After ten days, Qurban advised me to take a plane to Korla from Ürümchi because that would require my passport, not my ID card. With the help of Qurban, my name was eventually removed from the system’s blacklist after three months. During these three months, my movements had been restricted due to all the checkpoints that were set up everywhere. One time, my ID card set off a beeping sound, and I was taken to an auxiliary police station (协警站). With the help of Qurban, I got released.
At the entrance point to each village, there was a checkpoint. Anyone who wanted access to the village had to go through it. At the checkpoint, they would check your cell phone, your car (inside the trunk), your ID card, etc. I took a bus heading back to Yengisheher village. All the Uyghurs on the bus had to get off and show the police their phones and ID cards for inspection, and we were forced to download an app on our phone which cannot be uninstalled or erased. Only Uyghurs had to do this, not the Han Chinese.
Qurban reached out to me and asked me to work for the Chinese authorities as a spy in Turkey. I was asked to inform the Chinese authorities of any person who was planning to go back to East Turkistan and of those who would act against the government. I was also asked to collect information on the Uyghur activists from Korla region: their activities and their locations. I told them that I agreed to be a spy. I stayed five more months in East Turkistan until May 2017, during which we had four more meetings. I did not really have a choice at the time, and I could not say no to them. They said they could cover my expenses and arrange for meetings in other countries if necessary, such as in Malaysia or the UAE. If I had said no to them, I would have been sent to prison or an internment camp; and I would have been separated from my children. I had to say yes.
On March 18, the police from Yengisheher village detained me and took me to the Ittipaq Road police station in Korla. Three policemen interrogated me in the basement, asking me about my previous activities in Turkey. They then took me to an internment camp in Uzgen that used to be a drug rehabilitation center. At first, I resisted getting out of the car, telling them that I worked for the Security Service and that they had no right to detain me. They said that the order came from the higher-ups and that I should be detained. Upon entering the camp. I had to take off all my clothes to be examined.
I was then put in a cell with 11 other internees, and I knew nine of them. They were my former classmates, friends, or neighbors. We were treated like animals there. It was very cold in there, and my chest ached because of it. There were a toilet and a sink in the cell. For breakfast we were given two steamed buns, for lunch we were given vegetable soup (vegetables were not cleaned), and for dinner we were given one steamed bun. We felt hungry all the time, so we quenched the hunger with water. We could not take showers, and there was no soap. We all had long nails and we were not clean. When the camp guards came to open the windows on the ceiling to ventilate the cell, they would cover their noses because of the stench in the cell.
One of my cellmates, Ahunjan, was sentenced to three years behind bars. He had undergone surgery on his lower back, so he could not sit because of the pain. He could not use the toilet, and he had to be half-standing while relieving himself, which was terrible for hygiene. He had been sentenced for watching a video about the incident in Bugur County.
He also said there were many people with serious health issues in prisons run by Bingtuan, in which he was initially held. Prison officials once alerted a judge about some inmates’ serious health issues, but the judge neglected the concern, saying those inmates should be held in prison regardless. There were 57 Bingtuan prisons (newly constructed) in the Uyghur region. In Bingtuan prisons, inmates had to clean and prepare about 25 kilograms of red peppers each day. If they failed to complete the assigned task, they would receive physical punishment or would be subjected to food deprivation. The inmates were not paid for the work, and they were used for forced labor by Bingtuan. In Korla, exporting red peppers was a big business, for instance to Germany.
Ahunjan told me about other inmates there. He told me about how a 72-year-old man who had worked for the government for thirty years was sentenced to five years in prison, because he visited a relative in another village and prayed when it was prayer time. This elder man was from Kelpin County, whose name was Barat.
Another man, an 82-year-old from Khotan, who I believe was called Abduwahab. He was sentenced to five years in prison as well because they did not play music during the wedding ceremony of his grandchild, a choice they made to conform to Islamic tradition, for which he was accused of having extremist thought.
Ghappar Musa, another cellmate of mine, had very heavy shackles on his ankles, which shocked me. When I first arrived, his head was big and seemed deformed, but over the days it became smaller. The reason was that he had been beaten with something wet, like a piece of wet cloth, because it didn’t leave blue marks on the skin, though the beating made his head swell. The reason for his internment was that he listened to an audio recording that contained religious content with his family. He said to the Chinese authorities that he was the only one who had listened to it to protect his family, but his brother-in-law admitted to listening to it with the family. They beat him because his version was different from that of his brother-in-law. He was sentenced to five years in prison. They also threatened to intern his wife, his mother and other relatives, so he had to admit that they had listened to it together in order for them to stop beating him. Ghappar Musa also told me that there were 45 people who had been sentenced to prison because they had listened to that audio recording.
In the internment camp I also met a man named Ismail Ibrahim, who was from Aqtash, Korla. He was interned for having sent his son to study in Turkey. Circa March 21, 2017, on account of his high blood pressure he was taken to the hospital along with some other internees. When he came back, he cried a lot because he had been taken to the hospital in shackles, which were put around his wrists and ankles, and with a black hood put over his head. His relatives came to the hospital to pay for his examination fees, and they had to see him like that, which made them cry continuously.
They did not put more people in our cell, but during the night a lot of activities were going on: We could hear the camp guards open the iron doors as they brought people in. I also heard people scream and guards shout. After about a month of internment, I was released on April 18, 2017. I went straight to my father-in-law’s house, where I met my brother-in-law who had been held in Charbagh detention center for 45 days, and he was also released that day. My mother-in-law cried a lot, but she was also smiling at the same time as she was happy that we were back. Five days before we returned, Ibrahim Sepiwulla, the younger brother of my wife, was taken away and sent to the Charbagh detention center because he had previously traveled to Egypt.
My brother-in-law who was released on the same day as me told me about the situation in Charbagh detention center, in which approximately 4,000 people were held. He didn’t want to talk about it in front of his parents, so he told me about it separately. He said there was an incident that involved the young man named Abdusalam, who was 18 years old and wanted to kill two Han Chinese. He killed one of them with a rope and tried to kill the other one. Because of this incident, all the detainees were put shackles around their wrists and ankles for 24 hours. In the evening of April 18, the same day when my brother-in-law and I were released, my father-in-law was asked to go the hospital for a physical examination, which meant that he would probably be sent to an internment camp. He had serious health issues, so we pleaded for him, but the Chinese authorities refused. They said the order came from the higher-ups. I went to the hospital with my father-in-law and paid for his physical exam. They gave me his glasses and his cap, which I brought with me home. When she saw the glasses and the cap, my mother-in-law burst into tears. My father-in-law was 70 years old, and we still don’t have any news about him.
At the time, my brother Musa Hékim was also held in an internment camp. I went there to pay for his food expenses: CN¥500 (roughly US$78). I saw around 30 people stand in line outside the camp, waiting their turn to pay for the food expenses for their family members or relatives held inside. I went there twice to do the same thing, and there was line both times. I cannot describe the emotional pain of the people who stood in line. On my second visit there, the police asked me to show them my phone because they wanted make sure that I had not taken any pictures of what I saw there. The detention center was supposed to hold people for fifteen days maximum, like in pre-trial detention, but many people had been there for two or three years or even more. They turned it into a prison to hold people without trials, so I call these holding centers internment camps. Some of my wife’s uncles and cousins were also held in internment camps.
I did some research on how all these internment camps and detention centers are operated to persecute the Uyghurs. I found that there are eight Chinese authorities that are involved in the systematic persecution of Uyghurs, and they are described as follows:
The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (中共中央政法委员会) issued the first order to detain and intern a certain category of people, e.g., Uyghurs who had been to Egypt.
The National Security Bureau (国家安全局) is the authority that asked me to be their spy. They spy on Uyghurs both in China and abroad.
The National Political Security (国家政治安全保卫部) is the organ mainly responsible for carrying out the orders. They detain people who have been issued detention notices by other governmental organs, e.g., they detained Uyghurs who had been to Egypt. They are also in charge of interrogating them. I found out that 143 Uyghur men from Korla alone had been to Egypt, like my brother-in-law Ibrahim, who were detained by Guobao. This number also includes those who had been to Egypt legally, whose wives were often sent to the internment camps as well.
China Household Finance Survey (CHFS中国家庭金融调查), among the many tasks they have, inspects people’s bank transaction details. For example, the reason for my father-in-law’s interment I believe was that he sent CN¥12,000 (roughly US$1883) to his son to cover the study expenses in Egypt. CHFS can generate a list of people who have transferred money abroad and hand it over to say Guobao, determining who should be interned. A similar governmental organ was newly established at the time to meet the need for the Chinese regime’s mass internment drive in East Turkistan. I learned that only one Uyghur worked in that organ, while the rest of staff were Han Chinese. Some Uyghurs who financially helped orphans or helped finance the construction of mosques were interned.
Internet police inspects and surveils all the internet activities/communications of Uyghurs. Many Uyghurs were sent to the internment camps because “illegal” digital contents (e.g. religious contents) were found on their cell phones.
The police stations are also responsible for the execution of the orders from the higher-ups. They would round up nonlocal Uyghurs (i.e., those who were from other regions of East Turkistan) and treat them badly, either sending them to their place of origin or to the internment camps. I saw about 40 to 50 people waiting in the corridor of Yengisheher police station (in Korla) to be interrogated.
The village officials are in charge of family planning (birth control) and social relations of the people, who have the power to send people to the internment camps, e.g., Uyghurs who have many children.
The Neighborhood Committees (Juweihui居委会) can decide who should be sent to the internment camps on the basis of for example their behavior, i.e., people who prayed, grew beard, or advocated for others’ legal rights.
The abovementioned eight Chinese authorities are the main culprits in the persecution against the Uyghur people. They checked all the activities/communications dating back more than 20 years. If different authorities have different accounts of your story, you would be accused of lying to the authorities and probably be interned.
I met a lady after I was released from an internment camp, whose name was Merziye, and she worked at the post office and spoke good Mandarin. Her son Sadam was sent to an internment camp because he had been to Egypt. She did not know where her son was taken to. She was a good-looking woman and when she went to the police station to inquire about the whereabouts of her son, the policeman suggested that if she agreed to go to a hotel and have sex with him, he could maybe give her information about her son. She said, “You can shoot my son if you want, but I will never do such thing.” When I was held in the internment camp in Uzgen, I heard of someone called Sadam, so I told her that. She asked me to bring her there, but the camp guard said there was no such person there and refused to give her any more information. I can never forget how she cried so long outside of that internment camp.
I contacted Qurban again and asked him to help me leave East Turkistan. I could not say my farewell to my father at his home but we managed to meet in an orchard. I had to leave my mother-in-law alone who was in poor health. People had to shun her as her family was blacklisted by the authorities. Actually, two neighborhood committee officials went to warn that the people would be surveilled through the camera installed in front of the house.
In order to avoid another detention or internment, Qurban suggested that I should go to Ürümchi, so I went there and stayed in a hotel. One day before I left for Turkey, the national security police asked me to go to a hotel named Güzel Qashteshi. On the third floor I met Qurban and a Han Chinese officer. Our conversation lasted an hour or so, and they emphasized what I had to do once I was in Istanbul, and they said they would give me more tasks later. The Han Chinese officer took out the map of Istanbul and showed me where the Uyghurs lived, and then he left. I continued to talk with Qurban for a little while. I asked him how he felt about separating people from their loved ones. He said that in order for China to be strong, we had to be strong and willing to shed blood, like the United States did. He seemed to have come to this conclusion after spending 15 days of intensive special training in the mountains.
Finally, I arrived in Turkey and reunited with my family on May 27, 2017, during which time it was almost impossible for any Uyghur to leave East Turkistan. So all the people around me in Istanbul, even my close friends, became suspicious of me. Many accused me of working for the Chinese regime behind my back, while some told me to my face. I could not say anything to the media at the time as I feared for the safety of my family and friends back home. After about seven months, I decided that I could no longer keep quiet about all the things I had endured and witnessed and about the suffering of our people. I kept having nightmares, and I would wake up suddenly in the middle of the night. In November 2017, Qurban asked me to get some information about a person, but I did not give him anything. In February 2018, I talked to a Uyghur media out about the situation in East Turkistan; as a result, I received a call from Qurban, and he said, “I hope you did not jump ship and join the other side.” He threatened me by mentioning that I still had relatives back home, so I cut off all contact with him. Unfortunately, I lost my phone, so with it I also lost all the audio messages and photos of my family. In March 2019, I came to Germany.
In November 2019, I learned that five of my brothers and sisters were persecuted by the Chinese regime. I writhed in agony for two months, and I couldn’t even eat. I went to see a psychologist and got a little better.
Reyhangul Hékim, my elder sister and a mother of two, was born in 1974, who was sent to a women’s prison in Ürümchi.
Rahmanjan Hékim, my elder brother and a father of two, was born in 1978, who was taken to the Qarasheher Otichi prison. I do not know how long he was sentenced to, but this prison usually holds inmates with longer prison terms.
Musajan Hékim, my elder brother and a father of four, born in 1981, who was held in a prison for three months and then held in an internment camp for seven months. Sometime after his release from the camp, he was rearrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison. I do not know in which prison he is held, but I believe his long prison sentence was the retaliation from the Chinese regime because I decided to speak up against it to the media about my ordeal.
Ayshemgul Hékim, my younger sister and a mother of three, was born in 1988, who was sent to an internment camp.
Memetjan Hékim, my younger brother and a father of two, was born in 1991, who is also held in a prison.
With regard to all my siblings’ children, I do not know their whereabouts.