How I Survived A Chinese 'Re-education' Camp
Canbury Press (Verlag)
978-1-912454-90-7 (ISBN)
'An indispensable account' – Sunday Times
'Moving and devastating' – The Literary Review
'An intimate, highly sensory self-portrait' – Sunday Telegraph (Five Stars)
FIRST MEMOIR ABOUT CHINA'A ‘RE-EDUCATION’ CAMPS BY A UYGHUR WOMAN
Since 2017, one million Uyghurs have been seized by the Chinese authorities and sent to ‘re-education’ camps, in what the US Government and human rights groups describe as a genocide.
Few have made it out to the West. One is Gulbahar Haitiwaji.
For three years, she endured hundreds of hours of interrogations, freezing cold, forced sterilisation, and a programme of de-personalisation meant to destroy her free will and her memories.
This intimate account reveals the long-suppressed truth about China’s gulag. It tells the story of a woman confronted by an all-powerful state bent on crushing her spirit – and her battle for freedom and dignity.
Extract
‘In the camps, the ‘re-education’ process applies the same remorseless method to destroying all its victims. It starts out by stripping you of your individuality. It takes away your name, your clothes, your hair. There is nothing now to distinguish you from anyone else.
'Then the process takes over your body by subjecting it to a hellish routine: being forced to repeatedly recite the glories of the Communist Party for eleven hours a day in a windowless classroom. Falter, and you are punished. So you keep on saying the same things over and over again until you can’t feel, can’t think anymore. You lose all sense of time. First the hours, then the days.’
- Gulbahar Haitiwaji
Reviews
'Gulbahar's memoir is an indispensable account, which makes vivid the stench of fearful sweat in the cells, the newly built prison's permanent reek of white pain. It closely corresponds with other witness statements, giving every indication of being very reliable. Most impressive is her psychological honesty.' – John Phipps, Sunday Times
'Huge efforts have been made to obfuscate the realities of life in the camps (even speaking openly in Xinjiang about them can lead to incarceration). Although their existence has been well documented abroad and grudgingly admitted by the Chinese state, relatively few first-hand accounts of what actually goes on inside them have emerged. One is Gulbahar Haitiwaji's moving and devastating How I Survived a Chinese 'Re-education' Camp.' – Roderic Wye, Literary Review
'There follows an intimate, highly sensory self-portrait, created with the help of Rozenn Morgat (a journalist with Le Figaro), of an educated woman passing through a system that appears at turns cruel, paranoid, capricious and devastatingly effective. It begins with the confiscation of Haitiwaji's passport and a police interrogation during which she is shown a photograph of her daughter attending a Uyghur demonstration in Paris. One of the interrogators starts bawling at her - "Your daughter's a terrorist!" and before long Haitiwaji is plunged into a bewildering world of shackles, bunks and beaten-earth floors; grey gruel and stale bread served up by deaf-mute cooks selected for their silence; the sounds and smells of the communal toilet-bucket; and the buzz of security camera motors as they scan the cell.' ***** – Christopher Harding, Sunday Telegraph
Translated from the French book Rescapée du goulag chinois (Équateurs), How I Survived a Chinese Reeducation Camp is a riveting insight into an authoritarian world.
A true story, it reads like a 21st Century version of George Orwell's 1984 set in modern China.
Extract
In the camp, I wasn’t Gulbahar, but Number 9. I was forbidden from speaking Uighur, or from praying.
There was something extra about the taste of the vile slop that filled our bowls. Were they drugging our meals to make us lose our memories?
Physically and mentally, I became a ghost. My weight plummeted. The blinding light worsened my vision, and beneath my eyes, heavy rings made two pockets of shadow. My heart beat so weakly that I could no longer feel it when I pressed my palm to my chest.
Whenever I was deemed to have broken the rules, I was slapped or, on one occasion, shackled to a bed for a fortnight. I underwent hundreds of hours of nightmarish interrogations, until chaos gradually took over my soul.
Every week, women were taken away and we never saw them again.
At night, we’d wake to terrifying screams, as if someone was being tortured upstairs. We listened in silence, absolutely still, to howls that pierced the night. They were the cries of women going mad, begging guards not to hurt them any more.
Death lurked in every corner.
When the footfalls of guards woke us in the night, I thought our time had come to be executed. When a hand viciously pushed hair-clippers across my skull, I shut my eyes, thinking I was being readied for the scaffold, the electric chair, or drowning.
For two years, my husband, Kerim, and two daughters, Gulhumar and Gulnigar, had no idea where I was. They imagined the worst. They believed me dead.
I was born into a Uighur family that had lived in Xinjiang for generations. This jewel, more than six times the size of the UK, is at the far western end of China. Its riches include gold, diamonds, natural gas, uranium, and – above all – oil.
Since being annexed by the China, we Uighurs have been the stone in the Beijing regime’s shoe.
Xinjiang is far too rich a strategic corridor for it to lose and President Xi Jinping wants it cleansed of separatist populations. In short, China wants a Xinjiang without Uighurs.
Buy the book to carry on reading
Gulbahar Haitiwaji worked as a petroleum engineer in Xinjiang, China, before she left with her two daughters, to join her husband Kerim, who had sought asylum in France. She was tricked into returning to China, and vanished into its camps. Rozenn Morgat is a journalist with Le Figaro. She helped Gulbahar to tell her story, in the hope of alerting the world to what is happening to the Uyghurs.
Preface. Rozen Morgan, Le Figaro journalist and co-author, introduces the story of Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur woman who was tricked into returning to China and imprisoned in its ethnic 're-education' camps. The introduction contains an overview of the persecution of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang
Table of Contents. Lists the chapters for this first-hand account by a survivor of China's prison camps, amid the Chinese Communist Party's apparent genocide of members of the Uyghur minority people in the Xinjiang province, in north-west China
1. A Family Wedding. The boisterous Uyghur wedding of Gulbahar's daughter, Gulhumur, sets the scene on the happy days enjoyed by the Haitiwaji family in exile in France. Gulbahar explains her family's history and story in their homeland of Xinjiang, while outlining the persecution of the Uyghurs
2. China Calling. A representative at Gulbahar's former employer asks her to return to China to sign some pension papers. By then Gulbahar had joined her engineer husband Kerim in France. Despite rising persecution of Uyghurs, Gulbahar has returned to Xinjiang several times without incident
3. A Police Interview. When she arrives back in Xinjiang, Gulbahar is questioned and then arrested and grilled by police about whether she supports Uyghur independence, whether she has any links to the World Uyghur Congress, and her daughter's appearance at a Uyghur protest rally in Paris
4. Communist Party Glories. Gulbahar, a Uyghur woman who has committed no crime other than being a Uyghur (Uighur) in Xinjiang, is taken to a prison camp where she is taught to celebrate the glories of the Chinese Communist Party. In the cell, the Uyghur language is banned. Only Mandarin is allowed.
5. Shackled to a Bed. In Cell 202 in a Xinjiang detention centre, Gulbahar discovers the harsh lessons meted out to Uyghur prisoners in the Chinese Communist Party's 're-education' gulag. Xinjiang is earmarked for a key road in Xi Jinping's 'Belt & Road' initiative, also known as China's New Silk Roads
6. Inside Cell 202. Unshackled, Gulbahar is given her original clothes and told she will be leaving for a 'school' where she will be formally 're-educated' out of Uyghur culture and shown a new more fulfilling life as a humble and devoted servant of the Chinese Communist Party
7. ‘School’ with Xi Jinping. At her new 'school' in Baijiantan, Xinjiang, Gulbahar monotonously recites patriotic songs and slogans aimed at ensuring Uyghurs obey the Chinese Communist Party. Mentions Tiananmen Square, communist indoctrination, Chinese patriotic songs
8. Nadira Vanishes. All of a sudden, Gulbahar's cell-mate Nadira, a fellow Uyghur woman, goes missing: no-one knows what has happened to her. At night, Gulbuhar hears the screams of other inmates held in the 'reeducation' facility – Muslim persecution in Xinjiang, Uighur re-education camp, Xi Jinping
9. A Reunion with Hope. Gulbahar is reunited with her two sisters, during a brief visit to the re-education facility at Baijiantan. She asks for news of Kerim, Gulhumur and Gulnigar in France. Mentions Uyghur guards, Uighur genocide, Uighur humans rights abuses, Ürümqi
10. ‘Re-education’ is Working. The endless repetition of songs and slogans starts to erode Gulbahar's soul, diminishing her ability to keep hold of their own feelings and mental stability. Gulbahar is proud of her Uyghur culture, but her own personality and culture are slowing slipping away
11. Losing Body and Mind. After a year's detention, Gulbahar's health starts to deteriorate along with her mental health. The camp's medical staff inject her with "a vaccination" which stops the periods of younger Uyghur women inmates. China has been accused of forcibly sterilising Uyghur women
12. World Discovers the Camps. The 'relentless clockwork of brainwashing' at the re-education camp finally succeeds in demoralising Gulbahar, as China's campaign against Uyghurs is stepped up with authorities collecting DNA, fingerprints, retinal scans, and blood types of millions of citizens
13. France Discovers Gulbahar. The plight of the Uyghurs becomes better known around the world. Meanwhile France's foreign ministry becomes 'aware' of Gulbahar's fate and starts to negotiate with the Chinese authorities for her release. Mentions Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
14. Moved to a Bigger Camp. Amid protests and diplomacy from France, Gulbahar - 'Number 9' - is moved to an even bigger camp in Xinjiang, where she is told she is about to face her trial. Mentions Uyghur protest in Paris, Uyghur trial, Uighur persecution, Uyghur prison warders
15. ‘No 9. Your Turn!’. Gulbahar is tried in a Kafkaesque hearing at her prison camp, with a cameraman filming the proceedings for the Chinese Communist Party. She is sentenced for seven years imprisonment, seemingly for nothing other than the crime of being a Uyghur woman in Xinjiang province.
16. Where is Gulbahar? Gulbahar's daughter Gulhumar is interviewed on France 24 about her mother's fate, drawing the French public's attention to her incarceration in China. Meanwhile, the Xinjiang Victims Database, maintained by people of the diaspora, reveals the sheer number of Uyghurs sucked into China's gulag
17. Letting Myself Die. After more than a year in detention and facing a meaningless birthday incarcerated in China's desert prisons for Uyghurs, Gulbahar decides to let herself die. Then she realises, amid the interrogations, that the Chinese do not have enough evidence to keep her locked up
18. Battles With Tasqin. Gulbahar undergoes interrogation by a policeman called Tasqin. Relentlessly, he tries to get Gulbahar to confess her 'crimes'. Mentions Karamay, Uighur diaspora, Chinese jails, Uighur re-education, Rebiya Kadeer, Uyghur leader, Uyghur terrorism
19. Freedom? Still locked up in the prison in Xinjiang, Gulbahar is - amazingly - told she can go free by Tasqin. She is unaware of the diplomatic pressure the French government is exerting on China with the aim of securing her release. Mentions Uyghur minority, Uighurs imprisoned, Uyghur imprisonment
20. Fruit and Mint Tea. Freed from the re-education camp system where she has been kept by the Chinese authorities for the past two years, Gulbahar is transferred to an apartment block in Karamay, Xinjiang. There she is guarded by eleven Chinese police officers. Her police guards encourage her to eat.
21. Phoning Home. Under house arrest, Gulbahar is allowed to phone home to her family in France, whose diplomats have been urging China to allow her to return to her family. Some of Gulbahar's guards are Uyghurs. Don't they realise that the Chinese want to wipe the Uyghurs off the face of the earth?
22. Monitored All Day. The Chinese secret police encourage Gulbahar to bulk up her camp-ravaged body by eating. She is told that she cannot skip meals. She is also told to urge her family to remove all negative mentions of China's mistreatment of the Uyghurs from social media posts
23. Back in Karamay. Accompanied by her secret police minders, Gulbahar is taken to a shopping mall where she is allowed to purchase new clothes to improve her appearance. Mentions Uyghur city, Kashgar, Tian Shan mountains, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Silk Road, Taklamakan Desert, Sinicisation
24. Cooking for the Secret Police. As she continues her bizarre apartment life, Gulbahar feeds her secret police monitors. After two years in the re-education camps, she begins to rediscover the momentum of ordinary life, as a free Uyghur. She dreams that one day she will be reunited with her family.
25. The Truth is Voiceless. Gulbahar muses how Uyghurs in Xinjiang are forbidden from telling their story. They must remain mute to the outside world while they undergo the most vicious persecution by the Hans Chinese authorities. Gulbahar is allowed to meet her sisters and mother
26. Closing My File. When she returns to the apartment in Karamay, in the swelling heat of a Xinjiang summer, her house arrest is lifted and she is moved to a hotel room. At a short hearing, a judge overturns the seven-year prison sentence she received earlier and pronounces that she is innocent
27. Landing. On 21st August 2019, after more than two years lost in China's re-education camp system, Gulbahar Haitiwaji flies home to her family in France. Mentions French foreign policy, Uyghur internment, Uighurs interned in Xinjiang, Uyghur minority, Uyghur genocide biography, Amnesty
Afterword by Rozenn Morgat. Gulbahar is still haunted by her experiences as a persecuted Uyghur, Morgat writes. 'Poor sleep from short, restless nights keeps her in a state of constant, nagging fatigue. Her vision has also deteriorated badly and she has violent headaches
Acknowledgements. Rozenn Morgan thanks the many people who made it possible to tell Gulbahar's extraordinary story. Mentions Editions des Equateurs, Jeanne Pham Tran, Gulhumar Haitiwaji
| Erscheinungsdatum | 28.01.2022 |
|---|---|
| Übersetzer | Edward Gauvin |
| Zusatzinfo | 1 inset maps |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 145 x 234 mm |
| Gewicht | 400 g |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte |
| Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-912454-90-4 / 1912454904 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-912454-90-7 / 9781912454907 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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