More than 1 million Uighurs have disappeared into China's internment camps in Xinjiang province. A DW investigation reveals how many of them were tried for their alleged "crimes" in sham trials.
In the Chinese government's vast network of re-education camps in Xinjiang province, the daily horror of internment was infused with monotony and boredom. Detainees were forced to endure countless hours of indoctrination and language classes, perched on small stools. In some facilities, they had to watch TV propaganda broadcasts praising President Xi Jinping for hours on end.
The slightest infraction, such as a whispered conversation, was met with swift and harsh punishment.
But among the many months spent locked up, some former detainees report that one day was different: The day when they were forced to pick one or several infractions from a list they were handed. In essence, the detainees had to retroactively choose the crimes for which they had been imprisoned, often for months, in most cases without being told why they had been detained in the first place.
After picking a crime from the list came a sham trial, in which the detainees had no legal representation and were convicted without evidence or due process of any kind.
DW spoke to four former detainees, two men and two women from Xinjiang, a remote region in northwestern China whose mostly Muslim population has long faced repression by the Chinese authorities — including, in recent years, lengthy internment in re-education camps.
All four detainees spent months imprisoned in Xinjiang in 2017 and 2018. The interviews were conducted independently of each other, over the course of several weeks.
Detainees forced to pick crimes from a list
All four recalled the day they were handed a piece of paper detailing more than 70 acts and forced to choose one or several of them. Some of the acts were seemingly innocuous, such as traveling or contacting people abroad. But most of them were religious acts, such as praying or wearing a headscarf.
Since then, all four former detainees have moved to neighboring Kazakhstan, following public pressure from family members living there and, most likely, behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts by the Kazakh government. As a result, the Chinese government has released those with Kazakh residency permits, passports and family members living in Kazakhstan, which is home to a sizable Uighur community.
For those without outside links and citizenship, however, it is virtually impossible to escape China's vast network of repression and constant surveillance.
While DW is unable to independently verify the four detainees' stories, their accounts corroborate each other in key aspects.
One prisoner was in a hospital wing inside a camp, suffering from tuberculosis he had contracted during his stay, when he was given the list. The man speaks and reads little Chinese, so fellow inmates had to translate for him into the Uighur language.
Another was handed the paper by a teacher through the bars in the camp's classroom that separated the teaching staff from the students guarded by armed officers sporting stun guns.
"They threatened us: 'if you don't pick anything, that means you did not confess your crime. If you don't confess, you will stay here forever.' That's why we picked one crime," one female detainee who was imprisoned in March 2018 told DW.
One of the female detainees told DW of the horror she felt when she was handed the list and was forced to pick a crime and sign the list. She could not sleep for days, she says — afraid she would never be able to return home.
Another said it almost came as a relief: "To be honest, we were happy — at least we now knew the time period we would spend in the camp. Before that, no one told us how long we had to stay." Detainees were also told that if they cooperated, the number of years they would be forced to spend in the camp might be reduced.
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