The Guardian - China-I cant sing any more The survivors of Chinas prison camps in Xinjiang in pictures
December 28, 2023 5 min 1015 words
这组照片深刻展示了中国在新疆地区对维吾尔族等少数民族进行的关押、虐待和迫害。这些生存者的艰难经历令人心痛，生理和心理上的创伤难以愈合。报道揭示了中国共产党对民族传统的镇压，将其视为分裂主义的证据。在哈萨克斯坦重新开始生活的生存者们在重建破碎的生活、寻找新家园和应对创伤方面面临着极大的困难。文章指出，即使在脱离监禁之后，受害者仍然承受着长期的身体和心理影响。这一系列照片呼吁国际社会对中国的人权侵犯予以关注和制止，同时也反映了受害者们在流亡国外如何努力保持自己的文化传统。这是一个令人震惊的现实，需要国际社会共同采取措施制止这种严重侵犯人权的行为。
- What China calls Xinjiang region – a colonial term that means ‘new border’ – is usually referred to as East Turkestan by people who live there. This central Asia territory is home to many Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Dungans and other ethnic minorities who were imprisoned in re-education camps by the Chinese Communist party (CCP), with their traditions seen as evidence of separatism. Some survivors of the camps managed to travel on this road after crossing from Xinjiang to take refuge in Kazakhstan
- Survivors who arrive in Kazakhstan after time in the camps struggle to rebuild the life they lost: finding a new home, a job if their health still allows it, repairing family ties and dealing with traumas
- Sent to a re-education camp in 2018 at the age of 64, Yerke* saw her health quickly deteriorate. Locked a tiny cell with dozens of other women, she almost lost the use of her legs due to the cold floor she had to lie on. She was in the camp when she learned of her son’s death: pressured by the Chinese authorities, he took his own life. After her release, Yerke fled to Kazakhstan with some family members, but two of her children remain in China *Not her real name
- Saliman Yesbolat used to live in Ghulja county, Xinjiang. After she refused to denounce her Uyghur neighbours to the police, she was forced to perform the raising of the Chinese flag every Monday at dawn, and to attend Chinese lessons twice a week in the basement of her building, where she would learn the Chinese language, patriotic songs and Xi Jinping’s discourses by heart. This is her exercise book
- Dina Nurdybay, 32, was arrested in Nilka county, Xinjiang, because her traditional Kazakh clothing business made her a separatist, according to the Chinese authorities. She spent 11 months between two re-education camps, a CCP school and a forced-labour sewing factory. After proving she was capable of being ‘well behaved’ and having performed a self-criticism in front of the whole village, Dina was released and managed to escape when she obtained a week’s leave to visit her ailing father in Kazakhstan
- In March 2017, Miyessar Muhedamu, left, a Uyghur woman, was arrested in Xinjiang under the pretext that she had studied Arabic in Egypt when she was young. Her husband, Sadirzhan Ayupov, right, and her three children have not seen her since. Now that Miyessar has left the camp, Sadirzhan receives a short call every few months. He suspects she might have suffered abuse, yet Miyessar can’t speak freely. ‘She told me she’d been in a re-education camp, and that she’d been released. When I ask her what she went through there, she doesn’t answer,’ says Sadirzhan
- Saliman’s father, Yesbolat Tolenuly, a Chinese citizen of Kazakh ethnicity, was imprisoned in November 2021 after being sentenced to four years in Ghulja county. Chinese authorities claim he is guilty of going to the mosque in public, accompanied by fellow Uyghurs, wearing a beard, and practising namaz, the Muslim prayer. Fearing she would also end up in a camp, Saliman managed to take refuge in Kazakhstan with her husband and two children
- At 65, Imam Madi Toleukhan is one of the oldest refugees in Bekbolat, Kazakhstan, where more than 100 families took shelter after fleeing the Chinese regime. ‘We were richer back there. I owned a herd, but I was too afraid for my sons, my grandchildren and their future: I came to Kazakhstan to save them. I didn’t want them to be the fourth generation to suffer at the hands of the Chinese government,’ he says
- Aikamal Rashibek saw the dreadful efficiency of the CCP’s brainwashing on her husband, Kerimbek Bakytali, after he was released from a Chinese psychiatric hospital. ‘He disappeared for a year. When he came back, he didn’t tell me anything about what happened to him. He was highly unhinged, always nervous, and got angry whenever I asked questions. He couldn’t stop repeating that he hated Kazakhstan now, and that he wanted to go back to China with the kids to give them a Chinese education,’ says Aikamal. They are now separated
- Ospan* spent a year in a re-education camp. He says his mind and body were crushed by the tortures he experienced in a tiger chair – a steel apparatus with handcuffs that restrains the body in painful positions. Aged about 50, this former shepherd, who took refuge with his family in eastern Kazakhstan, is no longer fit for work. Physically wrecked and prone to headaches, he mourns the loss of his memory above all. ‘I used to know a lot of songs and I loved to sing; I also knew poems by heart … Now, I can’t sing any more, I can’t remember the words,’ he says. *Not his real name
- In Kazakhstan, medical care for camp survivors is poor. Most victims can barely afford to see a family doctor. Anara*, an endocrinologist in a Kazakh hospital who has examined about 50 camp survivors since 2020, noticed recurrent infertility problems among her patients. ‘Men or women, many have damaged genitalia. Some told me they’d been given drugs, others said they’d been raped. As they didn’t come to us right after being released from the camps, it’s impossible to know what kind of drugs they were administered in Xinjiang,’ she says. *Not her real name
- China’s repression of ethnic minorities also involves cultural genocide. As Muslim rituals are forbidden in Xinjiang, people are trying to keep their traditions alive across borders. Here, a family is praying together in Kazakhstan after the death of one of their relatives in Xinjiang. They could not repatriate the body because the border between the two countries was closed at the time
- Two members of the Dolan Ensemble, a Uyghur dance troupe based in Kazakhstan, get ready before performing a traditional dance to mark 40 days since the birth of a baby. Founded in 2016, the troupe performs at festivals or private events that bring together members of the Uyghur community, some of whom have had to leave Xinjiang