Women have been raped, sexually assaulted and tortured in internment camps for Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, China, the BBC reported Wednesday (Feb. 3).
Tursunay Ziyawudun, who was held in the camp for nine months, told the BBC that women were taken out of their cells “every night” and raped by one or more masked men. She herself was subjected to such torture.
“I don’t even want these words to come out of my mouth.” Tursunnai said, “It’s probably the most memorable scar of my Life.”
Some of the women never returned, she said, and those who were brought back were threatened not to tell others what had happened. “You can’t tell anyone what happened, you just have to lie down quietly.”
She added that they wanted to “destroy everyone’s spirit” and that “a lot of people lost their minds” after the abuse.
In the internment camp in Xinyuan County, Tursunnai was kicked in the stomach by police, subjected to unexplained medical tests, given pills and forced to take a nauseating and numbing “vaccine” every 15 days.
Gulzira Auelkhan is an ethnic Kazakh woman. She spent the entire 18 months in the camp.
She told the BBC that she was forced to strip Uighur women naked, handcuff them and then leave them alone with Chinese men. Gulzira said she was powerless to resist and even more powerless to intervene.
Qelbinur Sedik, an ethnic Uzbek woman who was one of the Chinese teachers at the camp, was told about the rape and sexual assault by female police officers she met at the camp, the BBC reported. The policewoman said rape has become a Culture, “It’s gang rape, and the Chinese police not only rape them, they electrocute them. They suffer horrible torture.”
Due to some restrictions on the Chinese side, the accounts of Tursunnai and others could not be fully verified.
Winter magazine, which specializes in religious freedom and human rights, reported last year that reports of sexual abuse of women in “re-Education camps” are highly credible, as there is a precedent for this in Tibet.
Millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to be held in internment camps in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. They are subjected to human rights violations in the camps, including torture, forced sterilization, forced abortions, rape and sexual abuse, and political indoctrination.
China has consistently denied abusing Uighurs or the existence of detention camps, saying they are vocational and technical education centers designed to de-radicalize and help lift regional populations out of poverty. China has said in a white paper that Xinjiang actively practices international labor and human rights standards and effectively safeguards the rights of workers.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a press conference on Wednesday that the BBC has issued more than one false report on Xinjiang-related issues, and that the report on the alleged violation of women’s rights in Xinjiang has no basis in fact. There has never been a so-called “re-education camp” in Xinjiang, and “some of the people interviewed by the media in question have been proven to be nothing more than ‘actors’ spreading false information.
He added, “China has so far issued eight white papers on Xinjiang, and the government of the XUAR has held more than 20 press conferences, showing with a large number of detailed figures and examples the peaceful, united and harmonious life of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, as well as the fact that the legitimate rights and interests of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are effectively protected. ” “We hope the media concerned will face up to the facts and stop smearing and defaming China without any basis on Xinjiang-related issues.”
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