INTERNATIONAL DESK: A former Chinese detective nicknamed ‘Jiang’ has termed some Chinese security officials involved in intimidating, harassing and arresting Uyghur people in Xinjiang as “psychopaths”.
Jiang, a whistleblower, has described in detail the process of arrest, intimidation, physical assault on Uyghur inflicted by the Chinese police in a detailed interview to CNN (5 October 2021).
This is another instance in the long list of crimes committed by the Chinese state on the Uyghur peoples of Xinjiang, much of it tantamount to genocide. The investigative CNN report is telling indictment of the Chinese way of torture and abuse of the human rights of the Uyghur.
The graphic detailing of the midnight raids describes armed police officers raiding community homes. One by one people are handcuffed, hooded and pulled out of their homes for transportation to the local detention centres and subsequently, to the infamous re-education camps.
Jiang states that arrests were made in large numbers, in fact several hundreds were normally picked up in one swoop. There is no particular crime for which ordinary people are detained and charged. This means that detained persons are given no reasons for arrest and taken away without any recourse to legal redressal.
The three hour long interview with CNN, provides details of the arbitrary detention of Uyghur across Xinjiang.
Jiang describes it as a “systematic campaign” of torture against ethnic Uyghur in the detention camps.
Jiang recalls that he and his colleagues brutally interrogated many people, mostly ordinary Uyghur, beating them mercilessly. In many cases, the beatings were so severe that the detainee passed away.
Tragically, the Chinese state did not spare women and even children, and every new detainee was beaten up on entry. People were shackled to a metal or wooden “tiger chairs” and subject to sexual violence, electrocution and beating with clubs and waterboarding.
Jiang’s recollections are echoed by the experiences of two Uyghur victims that CNN had interviewed separately.
Additionally, more than 50 former inmates of the camp system who have provided testimony to Amnesty International for the 160-page report released in June 2021, “Like We Were Enemies in a War’: China’s Mass Internment, Torture, and Persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang” broadly confirms the facts provided by Jiang.
The main objective of the detention of large number of Uyghur was to get them to confess to an imaginary crime, so that they could be packed off to a re-education centre. That is why the interrogation was intense and brutal.
Jiang states: “If you want people to confess, you use the electric baton with two sharp tips on top,” adding that, “We would tie two electrical wires on the tips and set the wires on their genitals while the person is tied up.”
This was standard operating procedure across Xinjiang. That is why Jiang claims that some of the police personnel were “psychopaths.”
Persons interviewed by Amnesty International for its report said they were detained without specific charges. Detainees were informed that they had been classified as “suspicious” or “untrustworthy” or as a “terrorist” or an “extremist”, which was justification enough to be arrested. Amnesty interviewed 55 former camp internees, all of whom had the same experience of arbitrary detention.
Many were detained without formal warning and whisked away in the middle of the night. Others were called by the police or by their village administration office and told to report to a police station, often under the pretence of being requested to hand in their passport and then detained once they arrived.
Many detainees were tortured and ill-treated during the interrogations in police stations before being transferred to the camps. Interrogations and torture were often carried out by members of the domestic security police, (Guobao) and sometimes the local police.
Former detainees were often interrogated in “tiger chairs”, steel chairs with affixed leg irons and handcuffs that restrain the body, often in painful positions, to an extent that it is essentially immobile. Some detainees were hooded and shackled during interrogations.
Jiang reveals that it was common knowledge among police officers serving in Xinjiang that 900,000 Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities were detained in the region in a single year.
The persecution of Uyghur in Xinjiang began officially with the 2015 official directive issued by President Xi Jinping, which inter alia, called on other provinces of China to join the fight against terrorism in the country “to convey the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important instructions when listening to the report on counter-terrorism work.”
To fulfill this directive, 150,000 police assistants were recruited from other provinces under a scheme known as “Aid Xinjiang.” The programme encouraged other provinces to provide help to Xinjiang, including public security resources. This temporary posting for police personnel was financially rewarding, Jiang said. He received double his normal salary and other benefits during his deployment. If the conditions of initial detention and interrogation in the local police
stations were bad, things were worse in the internment (re-education) camps.
First-hand accounts from several former detainees and a guard (as recorded by the BBC) shows that internees experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse, and torture.
Similarly, the interview of a Kazakh woman from Xinjiang (by the BBC) shows that she was forced to strip Uyghur women naked and handcuff them, before leaving them alone with Chinese men!
According to the evidence Amnesty International has gathered members of predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang have been subject to intense physical and psychological attack. The conditions thus prevailing meet all the contextual elements of crimes against humanity under international law.
The perpetrators acting on behalf of the Chinese state, have carried out a widespread and systematic attack consisting of a planned, massive, organized, and systematic pattern of serious violations directed at the civilian population in Xinjiang says Amnesty International. This and other evidence, including the statement made by former police officer Jiang, provides the factual basis for concluding that China has committed several crimes against humanity, including imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; and persecution. The question is whether the world will act against China?
(The HK Post)
জুমবাংলা নিউজ সবার আগে পেতে Follow করুন জুমবাংলা গুগল নিউজ, জুমবাংলা টুইটার , জুমবাংলা ফেসবুক, জুমবাংলা টেলিগ্রাম এবং সাবস্ক্রাইব করুন জুমবাংলা ইউটিউব চ্যানেলে।