Podcast “important today”
Torture and surveillance – this is how Uyghurs live in China
Uyghurs and other worshipers pray during a service at the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
© Mark Schiefelbein/AP/DPA
A black day: The UN Human Rights Council has rejected a debate on China’s human rights violations against Uyghurs. Omer Bekali, who was himself held in an internment camp, is a guest on “today important”.
China claims that in the Xinjiang region, where 90 percent of all Uyghurs live worldwide, there are only training camps and that a visit there is voluntary. But as early as May of this year, pictures and documents showing the mistreatment of Uyghurs emerged. In the “Today Important” podcast, Omer Bekali reports precisely on these camps, he was locked in one himself, nothing is there voluntarily: “People outside the camp don’t know what’s happening inside. The camp is surrounded by walls four meters high and there are electronic cables. In the camp there are between 30 and 40 people in each cell. And every day three or four of them are picked out and tortured. They made us starve. But they also tortured us physically and when we still resisted they locked us in a small black room. There were different methods. In one, three police officers torture them pretty badly and then you have to stand against the wall in the cell for 24 hours. And if you still fight back, you have to get up sit in a tiger chair. This is a type of metal chair where your hands and feet are tied to the chair. Another method is for the summer, then they put you on top of you in the sweltering heat smooth floor and then you have to sit naked. In winter they put you on hold. Then there was a water prison. Here you hang by your hands and the water rises up to your neck. You’re left all alone for a while.”
Torture of Uyghurs in China
The Uyghurs are a small minority of around 20 million people in the Xinjiang region of north-west China. Chinese sources mention them around the year 300. Ethnic connections to today’s Turks date back to this period. Since the 15th century, the Uyghurs have been predominantly Muslim. The Uyghurs themselves refer to their ancestral territory as East Turkestan. But these areas are a thorn in China’s side, says Omer Bekali in “important today”: “For 70 years, China has been trying in vain to expel the natives of this region from their land. But we haven’t changed our language, we haven’t changed our culture changed, we haven’t changed our religion. This leaves a big gap between us and the Chinese. It doesn’t make them happy. Even though they take our country’s proceeds, the gold, our mines, gas and oil from us and use them “And yet they see us as a threat to their country. Also, China wants to open up its trade routes to the West, and for that to happen, one of those routes has to go straight through our homeland. They want to control the country, to rule it through this kind of tyranny and violence – as they say – to ‘stabilize’.”
Oppression has also been documented
China has consistently denied suppressing the people, but internal images and documents dubbed the “Xinjiang Police Files” surfaced in May this year. Pictures that show the mistreatment there. At the end of August 2022, the UN Human Rights Office published a report that spoke of possible “international crimes, particularly crimes against humanity”. “If China denies what I’m reporting, then they should just release an hour of surveillance footage from the prison. Because in the detention center, in every cell, there were at least two cameras recording us. You can just publish an hour of these footage, can show me and the world that just one man lived a happy, normal life in the camp. That he ate well, slept well and was technically trained – just shows the world that I’m a liar.” said former prisoner Omer Bekali.
Omer managed to escape to neighboring Kazakhstan with the help of his wife, the local government and the media. Overall, he said, he was disappointed in the international community, because to date no one has been able to stop China’s repressive measures.
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