The World Uyghur Congress calls for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Violence also against Kazakh citizens. Tales of forced sterilisations. Prisoners tortured to death in Chinese concentration camps.
Moscow (AsiaNews) - "Everyone trembled listening to the lacerating screams of the women," these are the words of many witnesses to the World Uyghur Congress, including some Kazakhs, describing the suffering they endured in the Chinese concentration camps of Xinjiang, .
The meeting was held in Prague from 12 to 14 November. People from all over the world attended, calling for the persecution of the Uyghurs in China to be recognised as "genocide". In protest at the massacre of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic-speaking minorities of Islamic belief, the conference called on the international community to defect from the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.
The Chinese deny all accusations, claiming that those in Xinjiang are vocational training centres and projects to reduce poverty, fight terrorism and separatism.
Khidajat Oguzhan, president of the International Union of East Turkestan (the name by which Uyghurs call Xinjiang), denounced that the Chinese government "arrests, tortures, humiliates, divides families, enslaves and conducts biomedical experiments on the skin of our people and other Muslims in Xinjiang". He added that 'Beijing has turned the region into the biggest open-air prison in history'.
A Uyghur woman, Kelbinur Sydyk, recalled when "an 18-20 year old girl was given a forced contraceptive injection". The girl died two months later of haemorrhaging. The Chinese authorities had forced Kelbinur to work in an internment camp to teach the Chinese language. "I saw the 20-year-old's body being taken away in a wheelbarrow," the witness said. "It was normal to force women to take tablets so that they would no longer have children."
Kelbinur recounts that 40-50 people lay on the bare concrete floor of the room, harassed by the Chinese guards. The inmates were brought to "class" in handcuffs and had a maximum of one minute to go to the bathroom. The guards would take turns picking them up for interrogation even during "teaching".
The Uyghur interpreter then worked in a women's camp, with women between 18 and 40 years old, sometimes even older: "They were tortured with electric shocks and metal objects". After quitting her job, Kelbinur managed to escape to Holland.
Another witness, Gulbakhar Khaitiuazhi, spoke about her imprisonment: "They injected me with unknown preparations, and made me walk barefoot in 30 degrees below zero". In 2006, Gulbakhar emigrated to France with her family. 10 years later, she received a phone call from Karamaj's hometown, inviting her to return to sign some documents.
Once back in China, Gulbakhar was arrested and taken to a camp, where she remained for three years, accused of being a 'danger to society'. She says she arrived in the concentration camp with shackles on her ankles, watched by video cameras and forbidden to speak in Uyghur to other inmates.
Kazakh Omirbek Bekali also says he was tortured in Xinjiang, inflicted with the aim of obtaining an acknowledgement of guilt for a crime he did not commit. Arrested in 2017, he had held a Kazakh passport for 10 years, but this did not stop Chinese guards.
Omirbek had opened a tourist agency for travel from Kazakhstan to China, and was charged with terrorism and attacking state security. The classic torture he was subjected to was the 'tiger chair': the iron seat with electric shocks, to which he was tied with a hood over his head. I didn't sign up," the man said, "you only have to hold out for half a day, then you don't feel the pain anymore; I held out, and now I am here among you. But many did not resist and died after the torture."