“The mass detention camps are places of brainwashing, torture and punishment.”
Donate today to force China to close its ‘re-education’ camps and return all those who are being illegally detained
Imagine every move you make is being watched. The streets are filled with armed police and security checkpoints. Cameras follow your every step, using cutting edge facial recognition technology to track your movements. A single wrong move, and the police could swoop in and drag you away. A phone call to relatives overseas. Using a foreign website. Speaking to the wrong person. They might take you for no reason at all.
Uighur families in China’s XUAR region are living in a terrifying surveillance state, where their every move is being watched and they could be dragged away at any moment for brutal ‘re-education’.
There is no escape from the reach of the Chinese authorities. People who are living, studying or even visiting family in other countries are being forced back to XUAR by threats to their loved ones – like Bota, who doesn't know if her father is still alive.
The last time Bota spoke to her father, he told her that local police in the Xinjiang province of China had confiscated his passport. They didn't give him any reason. Three months later, she learned that he had been taken to a political 're-education' camp.
Bota's family live in fear every day, wondering where her father is. Today they live overseas and fear returning to the Xinjiang province where, as Uighur Muslims, they could be arrested and detained simply because of their culture and beliefs.
In the camps, detainees are forced to participate in psychological indoctrination programs, study communist propaganda, and write ‘self-criticisms’ to show whether they have been sufficiently ‘re-educated’ for release. They have to endure horrifying treatment – including verbal abuse, food deprivation, beatings, restraints and stress positions. There have even been reports of Uighur prisoners being killed to harvest their organs.
Right now, as many as one million Uighur are being held without trial in China’s mass detention camps – that’s almost twice the population of Tasmania.
We cannot let this go on. Donate today to help shatter the secrecy, and force China to close its ‘re-education’ camps and return all those who are being illegally detained.