A testimony from our “100 Camp Testimonies” Book
I am ethnically Han Chinese, and I went to multiple military police academies in mainland China. I had worked as a policeman for over 10 years. My job duties mainly entailed social order maintenance and national security affairs. I also carried out investigations of political and religious suspects, including Falun Gong practitioners and Muslims. In 2018, I was reassigned to a new post in Xinjiang (East Turkistan), where I stayed only for some months. However, I left China in 2020 and currently I live in Germany.
When I arrived in Xinjiang, I stayed in a police hotel, i.e., a residential area reserved for the policemen reassigned from other Chinese provinces. My main duties entailed investigating separatist activities/movement. I learned about the “reeducation” (or thought transformation) camps for the very first time from a senior colleague of mine. Other policemen told me that the reeducation camps were established to transform people’s ideologies that are not approved by the Chinese Communist Party. The majority of the people locked up in the reeducation camps are Uyghurs. It is worth noting that the term reeducation has nothing to do with education or vocational training; rather, it is about coercive brainwashing.
The local committees, under the oversight of local authorities, can decide who to send to the camps, which would happen behind closed doors. Those with higher social status are likely to be accused of being “two-faced.” There is no due process, i.e., no legal proceedings, nor are the accused given fair trials. The local committees are also responsible for the overall surveillance and monitoring of citizens, and can decide who to arrest based on the collected data. Furthermore, all Uyghurs had to provide their DNA samples to streamline the surveillance efforts of the Chinese regime.
In my discussions with other police officers, I learned that, during the period of my stay (only some months), as many as 150,000 new auxiliary police recruits were sent to Xinjiang. Upon their arrivals, they would receive political training and management training, teaching them how to deal with Uyghurs. Many of these new recruits did not receive an extensive professional police training; moreover, they were unemployed before they got recruited as auxiliary police. The Chinese regime initiated a recruitment drive for people from inner China who were ready to move to Xinjiang to work as auxiliary police. Among the various tasks they were assigned to, they would carry out routine checks at the countless checkpoints or convenience police stations that were set up throughout Xinjiang. In cities, a checkpoint was set up at every 500 meters, while in southern Xinjiang it was set up at every 200 meters. The auxiliary police would also carry out forced screenings and arrest people.
This recruitment drive is part of the Chinese regime’s “developing Xinjiang” policy, which is facilitated by “aid Xinjiang” (援疆) offices set up across the provinces in inner China. Various professionals such as doctors, teachers, police and military personnel are recruited. However, on account of the restrictive measures implemented in Xinjiang (e.g. strict curfews, frequent ID checks even for Han Chinese), many, including police officers reassigned to Xinjiang, did not want to stay in Xinjiang for too long. So as an incentive, the Chinese regime offers very high salaries for those who are willing to relocate to Xinjiang. In addition, young Han Chinese from inner China are encouraged to sign up for the well-paid military internship programs, organized by Bingtuan in Xinjiang. In many cases, after they move to Xinjiang, the newly recruited would be given free land that was confiscated from the Uyghurs.
When the newly recruited auxiliary police arrived in Xinjiang, they were immediately sent out to arrest Uyghurs. When I first arrived, I went around and arrested people, mostly Uyghurs. We arrested around 300,000 Uyghurs. The reasons for their arrest were, among other things, as follows: They might have had a knife at home; they showed some aspects of Uyghur culture; they were perceived or considered to have a different ideology. In some villages, the whole population was taken to what the government would call Thought Transformation Concentration Camps. These thought transformation centers all have strict rules and they are basically pre-trial detention centers (kanshousuo 看守所), just with another name, outside the legal system, and directly controlled by the Chinese government. Detaining or interning an individual does not require any legal proceedings, and if one has a “wrong” ideology that is not aligned with that of the government, one could face detention/internment.
Drawing from my previous experience working as a police officer in inner China, Uyghur suspects were treated differently, meaning more harshly than other suspects. There was a national Chinese policy guideline that says we need to arrest Uyghurs because they are automatically considered terrorists or enemies of the state. For instance, Uyghurs were not allowed to travel outside China, and if we caught Uyghurs trying to travel abroad, we would arrest them. Similarly, compared to other prisoners, Uyghur prisoners are monitored more closely in prisons. They are subjected to food deprivation as they must be treated as terrorists according to prison rules. And Uyghur prisoners were also routinely tortured with various torture methods. More often than not, I noticed that Uyghurs were charged on arbitrary grounds, e.g., some were charged with financing terrorism when in fact they just sent/received money internationally/from abroad.
I witnessed Uyghurs being tortured. I feel compelled to speak about it as the treatments toward Uyghurs contradicted my own professional police training. Uyghur prisoners were forced to kneel while getting punched, and a plastic bag would be tied over their head so as to induce asphyxia. The plastic bag would only be removed when they seriously struggled to breathe. Sometimes, their limbs were tied, and water pipes were inserted into their mouth forcing the water into their lungs. The purpose of torture was to force Uyghurs to renounce their religion and confess to their wrongdoings or crimes they were accused of. They were forced to sign confessions, admitting that they were terrorists. They also needed to provide a list of their relatives and friends and denounce them for being terrorists.
Other pieces of torture equipment that were routinely used against the Uyghurs included electric rods and hammers. The electric rods were connected to a male’s penis to inflict electric shocks, which was meant to humiliate and attack their self-esteem. Sometimes hammers were used to smash their legs. Moreover, they were subjected to food deprivation. Various torture methods were used to cause psychological distress. When prisoners went crazy, they would be stripped naked and immersed in cold water. These torture methods were systematically used against the Uyghurs.
The torture and the oppression of the Uyghurs were encouraged by the central government in Beijing because, according to the Chinese government policies, Uyghurs are untrustworthy and collectively defined as terrorists and enemies. And many of my former police officers accepted the regime’s description of Uyghurs, and felt like it was justified to oppress Uyghurs, believing that even if an Uyghur has not yet committed any act of terrorism, it is only a matter of time before they do. As a matter of fact, during my police training I was taught to see Uyghurs as “the enemy.” If a Chinese police officer decided to arrest Uyghurs, we would come up with a pretext and make the arrest appear legal.
The children of many interned Uyghurs were taken to state-run residential schools, where they would be assimilated into the Han Chinese culture by the Han Chinese Mandarin teachers, who were newly recruited from inner China.
I believe that the Chinese regime has targeted Uyghurs because it has the ambition of carrying out the grand unification policy (Da yi tong zhengce 大一统政策), the end goal of which is to achieve the concept of one Chinese nation. In so doing, the regime would destroy Uyghur people’s ethnic identity and simultaneously promote Han Chinese identity.
Xinjiang also has the problem of corruption in the government in addition to the problem of exploiting natural resources with extensive cheap labor force. Both Uyghur people and the Chinese government lay claim to the natural resources in Xinjiang. What is happening in Xinjiang is driven by settler colonialism in that the Chinese regime has exploited all natural resources in Xinjiang without really respecting the local populations, actually turning Xinjiang into a giant cheap resource extraction hub and using Xinjiang peoples as slaves. And if the local populations protested, they would be regarded as the enemies of the state. This is the reason why all Uyghur people have been labeled as the enemies.