Xinjiang: A Uighur man has documented what it was like inside one of China's secretive, high-security internment camps, where he said he heard the constant sound of prisoners screaming, and was told he would be beaten to death if he didn't follow orders.
Mergan Ghappar, a 31-year-old model, left the western region of Xinjiang in 2009 and began a modeling career in Foshan, southern China. He was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to 16 months in prison for selling cannabis, which his friends told the BBC as an exaggerated charge.
China Uighurs: A model's video gives a rare glimpse inside internment https://t.co/jvGyuO2xV6
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) August 4, 2020
Xinjiang is home to the Uighurs, a mostly-Muslim ethnic minority that has in recent years faced unprecedented oppression and surveillance by the Chinese state. People there have been forced to cut off contact with the outside world, and at least 1 million Uighurs have been detained and given arbitrary charges.
More than a month after his disappearance, Ghappar contacted his family on WeChat, a popular messaging app in China, telling them he was in a police jail in Kucha, Xinjiang, the BBC reported.
According to the BBC, Ghappar and his family communicated for several days where he detailed what it was like in the camp, then he stopped responding.
He wrote he was first detained in a police jail for 18 days. He said was put in with about 50 others — everyone had sacks on their heads, were handcuffed, shackled, and had an iron chain that connected the cuffs to the shackles — in a "small room no bigger than 50 square meters, men on the right, women on the left," according to the BBC.At one point, Ghappar said he lifted his hood to ask the guard to loosen his handcuffs, and the guard shouted at him: "If you remove your hood again, I will beat you to death," according to the BBC.
For food, the inmates shared a few bowls and spoons. He said the police would ask people who had infectious diseases to raise their hands, and those that raised their hands would eat last.
He took a photo of a document that encouraged children as young as 13 to "repent for their mistakes and voluntarily surrender," which the BBC reported looked like evidence that China is trying to control the thoughts of minorities.