A 43-year-old Muslim woman who says she escaped from a "re-education" camp in China's Xinjiang province recounted tales of horror from her experience, detailing incidents of gang rape and abuse.
Sayragul Sauytbay managed to escape by climbing through a window to a neighbor’s house then took a taxi to China’s border with Kazakhstan, where she managed to cross.
Speaking about her experience as a female prisoner, Sauytbay said inmates were gang raped, subjected to torture and medical experiments and forced to eat pork.
“It was forbidden to speak with the prisoners, forbidden to laugh, forbidden to cry and forbidden to answer questions from anyone,” she said.
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims are being held in state camps where China claims to 're-educating' them to turn them away from extremism. Globally, China's campaign is widely condemned for attempting to oppress Muslim minorities using abusive measures.
In 2017, the Chinese government put a banner over the facade of a mosque telling worshippers to 'Love the Party, Love the Country.’ Inside, another banner ordered all to 'Actively Promote Chinese-Style Islam.’
Since then, China has been reportedly subjecting Uyghur Muslims to various physical and psychological abuses inside concentration camps. Some told stories of being held in solitary confinement and others reported being forced to drink alcohol and eat pork, which is forbidden in Islam.
Sauytbay's account reveals some disturbing practices supposedly being used against people in the camps.
“There were almost 20 people in a room of 16 square meters. There were cameras in their rooms, too, and also in the corridor," she said. "Each room had a plastic bucket for a toilet. Every prisoner was given two minutes a day to use the toilet, and the bucket was emptied only once a day.”
According to Sautybay women were systematically raped and that she was forced to watch a woman be repeatedly assaulted.
"While they were raping her, they checked to see how we were reacting. People who turned their head or closed their eyes, and those who looked angry or shocked, were taken away and we never saw them again," she said. “It was awful. I will never forget the feeling of helplessness, of not being able to help her.”
The Chinese province of Xinjiang, which is believed to have detained more than a million people from mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in since 2017, has since denied all of Sautybay’s allegations.
