Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.
Sources say detainees routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers in the camps and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities. China’s ambassador in Washington, Cui Tiankai, told National Public Radio in an interview broadcast Oct. 4 that the facilities represented “efforts to help people to learn skills, techniques to build up their economic capability.”
An officer at a police station in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture’s Kona Sheher (Shufu) county recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service about the conditions at a camp where he worked as a guard for 10 months. In the first part of an interview, the officer—who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal—detailed the layout of the camp, the daily routine of the detainees, and the punishments they were subjected to if they did not obey the rules.
Read the full interview: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/officer-10042018162252.html
