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‘Horrific abuses’: Uighur report reveals first-hand accounts of torture
By Eryk Bagshaw and Anthony Galloway
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Australian Liberal and Labor senators have accused the Chinese Communist Party of unspeakable human rights abuses after first-hand accounts of systematic rape, sexual abuse and torture in Uighur detention camps in China were aired by the BBC.
The rare testimony, including from a former prison guard, is likely to lead to further scrutiny of the party’s practices in Xinjiang, which the US government has labelled genocide. Beijing has accused the United States and its allies of interfering in its internal affairs and dismissed the genocide claims as baseless.
One of the centres housing Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang region. Credit: AP
One Uighur woman, Tursunay Ziawudun, who spent nine months in detention and now lives in the US, said she was raped by groups of masked Chinese men and had an electrified stick inserted into her. Another, Qelbinur Sedik, an Uzbek woman who was a Chinese language teacher at one of the camps, said there were “four kinds of electric shock” — “the chair, the glove, the helmet, and anal rape with a stick”.
“The screams echoed throughout the building,” she told the BBC. “I could hear them during lunch and sometimes when I was in class.”
Gulzira Auelkhan, a Kazakh who was also detained for 18 months, said her job was to remove the clothes of young Uighur women chosen and paid for by Chinese men and handcuff them so they could not move. “Then I would leave the women in the room and a man would enter — some Chinese man from outside or policeman. I sat silently next to the door, and when the man left the room I took the woman for a shower,” she said.
An estimated 1 million Uighurs have been held in what the Chinese government claims are “re-education camps” over the past decade.
The Communist Party has claimed the facilities, which are heavily fortified, are necessary to combat terrorism after isolated acts of violence occurred between 2011 and 2014. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute used satellite imagery in September to find the Chinese government had been expanding its detention centres in the remote region despite its claims that all detainees had “graduated” from the vocational education programs.
Ziawudun told the BBC the camp spent hours singing patriotic songs and watching patriotic TV programs about Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A former camp guard who spoke on the condition of anonymity, but had his details corroborated by the BBC, said he saw detainees being forced to memorise books to pass loyalty tests. The detainees would wear different colours depending on how many times they had failed, and would be subject to increasingly severe punishments including food deprivation and beatings.
“I entered those camps. I took detainees into those camps,” he said. “I saw those sick, miserable people. They definitely experienced various types of torture. I am sure about that.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian has repeatedly dismissed allegations of persecution, torture and sterilisation as part of an international campaign against China.
“The so-called ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang is a completely false accusation, a lie concocted by some anti-China forces and a farce staged to smear and defile China,” he said last week.
Labor senator Kimberley Kitching. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Labor senator Kimberley Kitching said the BBC’s report showed “some of the most horrific and unspeakable human rights abuses” we have seen in recent memory.
“The weight of evidence steadily coming out of the Xinjiang region leaves no room for doubt as to the oppression Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are living under,” she said. ”Despite the CCP’s constant denials, the international community can no longer be idle in the face of this brutal repression.”
Liberal senator James Paterson said the reports were “profoundly distressing”.
“The ongoing systemic mistreatment of the Uighur people by the Chinese Communist Party is an affront to universal values of human dignity and must be resolutely condemned by the world,” he said.
Paterson and Kitching are co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group of up to 200 MPs in Europe, the US and the Indo-Pacific that have criticised the Asian giant’s growing power and condemned its human rights abuses.
The alliance called for a UN-led investigation of crimes against humanity.
Liberal senator James Paterson. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“The time for mere words has long passed,” the joint statement said. “We must now move towards a co-ordinated effort to hold the Chinese government to account. These atrocities must be stopped.”
Human Rights Watch Australia director Elaine Pearson backed the call for UN investigators to be sent in.
”For years, Human Rights Watch has documented the Chinese government’s mass arbitrary detention, torture, forced political indoctrination, and mass surveillance of Xinjiang’s Muslims,” she said. “Meanwhile, Chinese authorities continue to enjoy impunity for systematic rights violations in Xinjiang.”
Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said “anyone reading these women’s testimonies would be disgusted by what they were subjected to”.
“This evidence is counter to China’s international human rights obligations and is not consistent with the behaviour of a respected and responsible international power,” she said.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne was contacted for comment.
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