A testimony from our “100 Camp Testimonies” Book
I am an ethnic Kazakh, and I was born in 1980 in Moyintal village (莫音塔勒村), Tarbaghatay (Tacheng塔城), East Turkistan. I moved to Kazakhstan in 2004, and a year later I got my Kazakh citizenship. When I returned to East Turkistan in November, 2017, I was accused of being a traitor for having a Kazakh citizenship, i.e., the Chinese regime does not accept dual citizenship. I was first put under house arrest for two months, after which I was taken to an internment camp. I was incarcerated for six months, during which time I was moved between two camps. After my release, I went back to Kazakhstan on April 12, 2018.
On November 22, 2017, I traveled back to East Turkistan as my other relatives still lived in Tarbaghatay region such as my brother. At the border crossing, when I gave the Chinese officer my Kazakh passport for a routine check, they confiscated my passport, asking me where my Chinese passport was. I said I did not have one as I was/am a citizen of Kazakhstan. They took a picture of me, and told me that I had dual citizenship, which, according to them, was considered a crime. They said that there was no record of the renouncement of the Chinese citizenship in the system.
Initially, I stayed at my cousin’s house, during which time I was always followed and asked what I was doing. Visiting other family members or engaging in any religious activity was forbidden. I was effectively kept under house arrest for two months. Subsequently, I was allowed to go to my hometown, and I stayed with my relatives. My hometown changed a lot, and my own family members were afraid to talk to me for fear of retaliatory actions from the regime. The year 2017 was nothing like the year before. Every day, the local authority would check on me. I was told that I could not leave East Turkistan until I got my proof of renouncement of the Chinese citizenship, which I was going to receive soon, according to the authority.
One day, they asked me to sign a document, telling me that they would officially cancel my Chinese citizenship, and that I could go back to Kazakhstan. So I signed the document. They made me admit that I was a traitor. I was interrogated and asked questions such as why I went to Kazakhstan, why I got Kazakh citizenship, and why I came back to East Turkistan.
After some weeks, on December 15, 2017 the ethnic Kazakh interrogator stationed at the border came to see me, who was accompanied by three other Han Chinese officers. They said that my paperwork was in order, and that they would take me to the Kazakh border. But before that, I needed to get a physical examination, they said.
They drove me to a large office building, which looked like a hospital; everyone there wore a white coat. However, I do not think the building was actually a hospital. I was taken from one room to another for various examinations. There were several doctors, both male and female, who examined all parts of my body, from head to toe. Since I did not speak Mandarin, I could not understand what people were saying. I wanted to resist, but I was afraid of doing so. They took my blood pressure, an X-ray, urine, blood, and stool samples, and checked my heart.
After the physical examinations, I was taken to an internment camp. They said I was a traitor because I became a Kazakh citizen. The internment camp was fenced off with barbed wire, which looked like a prison. I knew we were somewhere in the middle of Tarbaghatay, but I could not quite pinpoint our position. I unconsciously took my cell phone out of my pocket and tried to make a call, but I did not even know who I was going to call. They confiscated my cell phone the moment they saw it. As we entered the building, I was told that I had to go through an intake process. They later said that I would be set free. I then changed into prison uniform.
I was put in a holding cell that had seven internees, most of whom were Uyghur. I was interrogated in the first 24 hours; I was asked lots of questions: Why did you come back? Who did you stay with? I answered all the questions. I told them that all my brothers were in Kazakhstan, and that I came back to visit my relatives. They accused me of being a traitor. I asked them why they did not detain me in 2016, when I went back to attend my father’s funeral.
On the morning of the seventh day, two officers came and I was taken for interrogation. One of them was either Kazakh or Uyghur, while the other was Han Chinese. “Why are you here,” one of them asked. “First of all, you have dual citizenship, which is a crime. Secondly, you are a traitor. And thirdly, you have debt in China.” None of it was true. I told them I did not have dual citizenship, meaning I only had Kazakh citizenship. I did not have any debt in China. I left for Kazakhstan a long time ago, and I did not owe China anything and China did not owe me anything. I repeated what the man at the border had advised me to say: I only came to check on my registration status. “I don’t know why I’m here,” I told them. I did not commit any crime, and I kindly asked them to show me criminal evidence.
Suddenly, they took me to a different room. It was a cold December day. I saw a hole in the ground, around two meters deep. “If you don’t understand, then we’ll make you understand,” they said. I was thrown into that hole in the ground with my hands cuffed, doused with cold water and severely beaten. It was so narrow inside the hole that I could not move. At some point, I lost my consciousness.
During my internment, I was forced to learn three communist red songs (hongge 红歌 ‘Chinese patriotic songs’). Even though I did not speak a word of Mandarin, I tried to learn them anyway. It took me one and a half months to learn the songs, whose contents were incomprehensible. We were not allowed to speak to other internees, and if one did, one would be forced to sit on a small plastic stool. You have to sit straight, and if you leaned backward, you would be beaten from the sides. If you broke any camp rule, the punishment would be the tiger chair, a piece of torture equipment.
After one and a half months or so, I was taken to a hospital for a check-up, and given an injection on my right shoulder. They told me it was for the flu, and every other internee also received one. After receiving the injection, I felt tired all the time and struggled to concentrate.
The camp warden spoke Kazakh, the only person I could communicate with, but he was ethnically Uyghur. I asked him why I was here, he said because I got Kazakh citizenship. I was told that I had to learn Mandarin as well as those red songs, and I would be held there for five years. If I did not learn Chinese, I would not be released.
Early in the morning, some of the internees would attend “classes.” Initially, I knew nothing about the classes, but after one and a half months, I started attending those classes as well. I was taught the regime-approved history of China. If I did not listen to the teacher, I would be punished, i.e., they would put a black hood over my head.
One day they shaved all our heads. I was put in a cell that held 25 people, and we kept it clean because the toilet and the beds were in the same cell. The camp guards would just come to our cell and make a mess, while we were told to face the wall. We would then clean up the mess, e.g., they threw matchsticks everywhere.
Every Sunday, our cell would be searched. We all had to kneel and put our hands on our heads, and look down as they went through everything. We could see the guards’ pistols in peripheral vision. I did not know what they were looking for.
With respect to food in the camp, we were given some meat, but we did not know whether it was pork, donkey meat or something else. I did not have a choice but to eat whatever that was given.
We could hear people scream while being beaten, and sometimes those screams were so loud that we could hear them in the dining room. I was held in the “black room,” in which it was pitch black, with no light. It had concrete floor, and no bed to sleep in. I was held in there for around 125 days, maybe more, during which time I was deprived of salt. When your sodium level in your blood falls below the normal range, you experience muscle cramps and your bones become weak (osteoporosis). And I definitely suffered from hyponatremia.
I do not know exactly how long I was held in the first internment camp, maybe two to three months, and then I was taken to another internment camp. I asked them how many people were held there, they said it was around 5,000. I also asked how many people were taken from the first camp as I had a black hood put over my head, i.e., I could not see how many of us were being transported to the second camp. I was told that the number was probably around 500.
The first camp had small holding cells, and sometimes my cousin was allowed to visit me. I would tell him that I did not need any Mandarin language studies as I was/am a Kazakh citizen. He told me that I should just continue to study Mandarin. The second camp was much bigger, where the violence and abuses we the internees were subjected to were even worse. There was more screaming, and they also shaved the women’s heads, so men and women looked the same. We were not allowed to go outside, and it was much stricter, e.g., no visitation rights. I was not able to talk to anyone.
In the second internment camp, I was in shackles all the time, and I was often beaten. Those who did not listen to the camp guards always had shackles on, and were taken to the “black room.” The toilet was in the cell, the floor was very cold, and we had to sleep on the concrete floor. We also ate in the cell.
I wanted to commit suicide. One of my cellmates explained to me that I should not try to do so as it was not a good strategy getting myself out of the camp. Once, I even tried to strangle myself with a shirt, but the guards came and stopped me. They knew about it because in every cell there was a surveillance camera installed.
The day before I was released, I was interrogated from 6 p.m. until the next morning. I was released on April 12, 2018, and I returned to Kazakhstan and kept a low profile for a month before I started talking to the media.
I have been quite outspoken about my internment ordeal, and many news outlets have interviewed me and reported on my internment. People around me in Kazakhstan asked me why I chose to speak out, and I said to them that the Chinese regime should be held accountable for what they did to me. I was not even a Chinese citizen, and I want to know why they interned me.
I suffer from insomnia, and I struggle to remember what happened yesterday. My memory has gotten worse, and the medicine I have taken did not help. My heart rate is abnormally high, and sometimes I tremble.