April 4, 2022
Dear Friends and Family,
Between the past China Series and this Epilogue Series we have learned a number of things about the Chinese Communist Party.
NOTE: The text provides the essence of life in China’s concentration camps via The Chief Witness written by a woman who escaped such a camp. But it does not do justice to the full story and fate of the author. That can be found by reading the PDF at the end of the text.
Next: The forces of globalism have resulted in the forming of close relationships between the elites of Wall Street and Silicon Valley with prominent members of the Chinese Communist Party. In his book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, investigative reporter Peter Schweizer reveals how some American corporate elites have profited from it.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
Between the past China Series and this Epilogue Series we have learned a number of things about the Chinese Communist Party.
- Their goal is to displace the U.S. as the only world superpower by 2049.
- Their means to achieve global control will be through unrestricted warfare – financial, terrorism, ecological, cyber, technological, biological, plus conventional and nuclear. Albeit the COVID – 19 pandemic was probably the result of a lab leak, no one is disputing China’s capability to do so nefariously in the future. The pandemic maybe a fortuitous warning of the potential they have with their various forms of warfare.
- They already control multiple sources of supply to the U.S. that could have crippling effects on our economy if shut off – such as essential drugs and rare earths.
- They are expanding their control over other poor nations (particularly in Africa) via their Belt and Road initiative.
- They are becoming much more entrepreneurial to meet their goal of technology worldwide leadership by 2025, e.g., solar-based power and artificial intelligence.
- They will continue to steal U.S. intellectual property, confiscate U.S. operations in China, and buy U.S. businesses (e.g., G. E. Appliances)
- They are and will continue to control their populace via their social credit system.
NOTE: The text provides the essence of life in China’s concentration camps via The Chief Witness written by a woman who escaped such a camp. But it does not do justice to the full story and fate of the author. That can be found by reading the PDF at the end of the text.
Next: The forces of globalism have resulted in the forming of close relationships between the elites of Wall Street and Silicon Valley with prominent members of the Chinese Communist Party. In his book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, investigative reporter Peter Schweizer reveals how some American corporate elites have profited from it.
Happy Learning,
Harley
CHINA EPILOGUES – EPILOGUE 2
RE-EDUCATION CAMPS – EXCERPTS
NOTE: All the excerpts are from The Chief Witness by Sayrabul Sauytbay (2021).
INTRODUCTION: Since ancient times, China’s north-west province Xinjiang has been home to a predominantly Uighur population, but there are also numerous other ethnicities represented, including Mongolians, Kyrgyzstanis, Tartars, and the second-largest group, the Kazakhs, to which I belong. Our province was called East Turkestan until, in 1949, China violently annexed the whole region. Officially, Beijing guarantees the indigenous people here autonomy, independence, and free will. Unofficially, however, the government treats us like a colony of slaves.
Since 2016, our province has been transformed into the largest surveillance state in the world. A network of more than 1,200 internment camps exists above ground, but there are increasing reports of subterranean camps as well. We estimate that approximately three million people are currently begin detained. They have never stood trail. They have never committed a crime. This is the biggest systematic internment of a single ethnic group since the Third Reich. In East Turkestan, every scrap of information is controlled. Uncensored books and magazines, and social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp, are forbidden.
One in ten Muslims in my home province is currently interned. The evidence for these camps is overwhelming – we have satellite images and documented witness statements – so Beijing has finally admitted their existence, after long denying it. Yet senior Chinese politicians continue to talk euphemistically about “vocational training centers.” The official Party line is that the foreign media are “spreading malicious lies,” that all the “students” are there of their own free will, and that most have already been released anyway. Anyone who tells the truth about these camps in East Turkestan is branded a foreign spy, a liar, or a terrorist. Chinese censors immediately erase all the information available online, and anyone who passes on this information within China vanishes without a trace the very next day.
My situation is unusual, because I was put to work as a teacher in one of these camps. This position offered me an insight into the innermost workings of the system: and what I saw was a meticulously detailed, carefully considered piece of bureaucratic machinery that operated according to explicit instructions from Beijing. This wasn’t just about systematic torture, humiliation, and brainwashing. This was the deliberate extermination of an entire ethnic group.
As a chief witness, I’ve shared my knowledge of the inner workings of this fascist system. I speak not just for myself, but in the name of all the people held in these concentration camps, and for those who are in fear of their lives under this dictatorship. The goal of China’s campaign is to achieve political control of the entire world. This is why my advice to all other countries is this: “Don’t avert your gaze from East Turkestan! This is how your children and grandchildren will be living in the future if you don’t defend your freedoms!”
LIFE IN EAST TURKESTAN -- RE-EDUCATION CAMPS: Police cars patrolled the streets 24 hours a day, sirens on and light flashing. No respite. Nobody was allowed to speak out. Officers in uniform might show up unexpectedly at any time to drag people away. Some they shook awake in the middle of the night; others were informed in advance that they would be brought to a re-education camp in the next couple of days. Several people hanged themselves in their homes before they could be taken. Many children were left behind with no one to look after them, so the CCP took them to an orphanage. Others died on the street.
LATE 2017: ARRIVING AT THE CAMP: The doors burst open, and four policemen with machine guns jumped out. Seconds later, they grabbed me by the sleeves, thrown a hood over my head, and shoved me into the back seat. I’d been taken in before, of course, but this time I knew: It’s finally happening. They’re taking me to a camp. My life is over.
LIFE IN THE CAMP: Ahead of me and slightly to the left was a small hall. On the left, a corridor roughly 25 meters long branched off from the hall, with 12 cells on either side. Later, I noticed that men and women were kept on separate sides. The door of each cell was triple-locked and secured with an additional iron bolt. Two guards were assigned outside, working in shifts, 24/7. The reason they went to such extraordinary lengths was because they were terrified that prisoners might break out and bring their atrocities to light. There were cameras on both sides, every two meters. Not a single nook or cranny was left unobserved. There were no windows anywhere.
At six on the dot, all the doors on both corridors opened automatically. From the open doors of the prisoners’ cells came an abominable stench of sweat, urine and feces, wafting across the hall and permeating the whole block. The Blue-uniformed guards wore masks whenever they entered the cells. At this point, I didn’t yet realize that the regulations stipulated each individual should have one square meter of space. In reality they would cram up to 20 people into 16 square meters. On the bare concrete floor was a plastic rollout mattress as thin as two shopping bags, plus a flimsy pillow and a thin plastic blanket. There were approximately 400 prisoners per level. They only allowed on plastic bucket with a lid per cell, which served as a toilet. The prisoners were only allowed to empty it once in a 24-hour period. If after five hours, the bucket was full, the lid had to stay on. So even if the prisoners’ bladders were bursting or their bowels were rumbling, they had to wait until the bucket was empty. Over time, this led to terrible organ problems in some individuals, and the air was so foul it made everyone nauseous.
Conversation was forbidden. Every single procedure in the camp was organized down to the most minute detail. At the end of the corridor there was a window-sized aperture in the wall, through which a Chinese kitchen assistant pushed plates of food. As an indigenous woman I was given one piece of steamed, mushy white bread and a small ladle of cooked rice water with a few floating grains of rice.
Teaching the Living Dead: I’d scarcely set foot in the room before my 56 students rose to their feet, ankle shackles jangling and shouted, “We’re ready!” They all wore blue shirts and trousers. Their heads were shaved, their skin white as a corpse’s. I stood to attention in front of the board, flanked either side by two guards with automatic rapid-fire guns. I was so unprepared for the sight and so appalled that for a moment I almost tottered on to my feet. Black eyes, mutilated fingers, bruises everywhere. A cohort of the living dead, freshly risen from the grave. There were no tables or ordinary chairs, only plastic stools meant for kindergarteners. For an adult, it wasn’t easy to sit upright, especially if you were in pain, like some of the men in blood-soaked trousers, whose hemorrhoids had burst. Roughly 60% were men between the ages of 18 and 50. The rest were girls, women, and elderly people. In the first two was the youngest a schoolgirl 13 years old – tall, thin, very clever. With her bald head, I’d first took her for a boy. The eldest, a sheepherder who joined us later was 84. Fear was etched into every face.
Water Soup and Fresh Instructions: From midday till two, the guards put all the prisoners back into their cells and the staff back into their rooms. Minutes later, I was in the kitchen queue with the other workers, ladle in hand. This time, I was handed a small piece real bread and bland vegetable soup that was more water than vegetable. Sometimes I’d even get a spoonful of honey. Every day, they alternated these three different meals, morning, noon and night. For months. The prisoners were virtually left to starve, although, unlike me, they were forced to eat pork every Friday. Initially, some Muslims refused. Their protests resulted in nothing but torture and unforgettable pain. After a while, these people ate the pork, too.
Self-Reflection: The next two hours were primarily about sitting still and reflecting on one’s mistakes. This time, I remained in the background. The two heavily armed guards, plus two or three Chinese employees from other departments, planted themselves in front of me. One of them raised his voice. “If you acknowledge your crimes quickly and try to make them right, you will be released sooner.” In case they didn’t understand Chinese, I had to translate it into Kazakh.
Some of the prisoners didn’t know why they were in the camp, the employees explained. They might be guilty of praying, of holding quite ordinary religious views, or of harboring negative thoughts about the Chinese language, Chinese customs, of the Chinese in general. In fact, there were hundreds of different reasons why all these people had been arrested. A photo taken with the wrong individual was all it took. Anybody who maintained their innocence was not only punished but found their relatives had been detained. And confessions had to sound believable.
A Break and an Evening Meal: The prisoners lined up outside their cells: women on one side, men on the other. Down the middle of the floor ran a straight red line, framed either side by a blue line. They had to move unswervingly along this red line. Shackled at the wrist and ankle, they were only able to take small, shuffling steps.
“I’m a Criminal!”: The prisoners were dismissed into their cells to “accept their crimes internally.” This meant concentrating on them fervently and repeating their offences over and over in hushed tones. “I’m a criminal because I prayed. I’m a criminal because I prayed. I’m a criminal …”
Written Confessions: Every inmate spent two hours hunched over their notebook on the floor of their cell, writing down their admissions of guilt. As long as the prisoners were awake, the staff were trying to control their thoughts. Even when they were finally left alone, I don’t know how so many people were able to rest in such a confined space. They had to sleep pushed up against one another, on the right sides, chained at the wrists and ankles. Turning over was strictly forbidden and would be harshly punished.
1 AM to 6 AM: Sleep: After I was relieved of duty, I curled up on the plastic mattress, drew up my knees, and pulled the blanket over my head. The cold oozed up out of the concrete floor and into my bones. Usually, in an attempt to stay a little warmer and more comfortable, I kept my uniform on. Sleep was impossible, although I was utterly exhausted. The stench of the toilets, the screams still echoing in my ears, the unbearable things I’d seen – I was so shocked and frightened that every muscle was tense. For days, life in the camp was exactly the same. Artificial light 24 hours a day. Locked in a concrete coffin. Before long, you didn’t know if it was day or night.
Showering: After a while, the prisoners’ clothes would stick to their bodies. They stank of sweat and dirt, but they were only allowed to wash once every month or two.
The Black Room: The space, roughly 20 meters square, looked a bit like a darkroom. In the middle was a table three of four meters long, crammed with all kinds of tools and torture devices. Tasers and police cudgels in various shapes and sizes; thick, thin, long and short. Iron rods used to fix the hands and feet in agonizing positions behind a person’s back, designed to inflict the maximum possible pain. The walls were hung with weapons and implements that looked like they were from the Middle Ages. Implements used to pull out fingernails and toenails, and a long stick – a bit like a spear – that had been sharpened like a dagger at one end. They used it for jabbing into a person’s flesh. Along one side of the room was a row of chairs designed for different purposes. Electric chairs and metal chairs with bars and straps to stop the victim moving; iron chairs with holes in the back so that the arms could be twisted back above the shoulder joint. My gaze wandered across the walls and floors. Rough cement. Grey and dirty, revolting and confusing – as though evil itself was squatting in that room feeling our pain. I was certain I would die by dawn.
Two men were standing in front of me. They expected me to confess my guilt and make up a crime, even though I hadn’t done anything. I was terrified they would strap me into the “tiger chair” with the nails or cut me open with a scalpel, but they had chosen the electric chair. Suddenly, my whole body was shaking and twitching as though it was no longer my own. At the same, blows started raining down. My head hanging, I saw the lace-up boots in front of my face. “You’re a conspirator! You’re lying,” the mask man roared. Then they hit me on the shoulder, on the head, the hands, until I collapsed again.
The longer it took me to answer or to confess my guilt, the more they upped the current. I had to tell them what they wanted to hear. My torturers had no humanity, no sympathy or emotion. They were like rabid dogs on a chain. Vicious and wild. Those men didn’t see us a people – we were more like test animals or lab rats. I kept losing consciousness because of the electric shocks. It was obvious how much satisfaction they took in the suffering of others. They laughed while they were doing it. The more they heard me whimpering with pain, the more clearly I saw the pleasure on the face of the unmasked man and the more avidly they tortured me. You must not show pain.
Medical Annihilation: After a while, they prescribed me medication. Some prisoners clamped their mouths shut out of fear, and others whimpered that they didn’t want any medicine, but nobody was let off. The medics would forcibly open their prisoners’ jaws and give them the drug. After that, many of the women stopped having periods. They weren’t experimenting on us. They didn’t just want to make us numb or permanently insane. They were trying to annihilate us.
State Secrets: The Three-Step Plan: Some new National Security officials were in one of our rooms. The most senior person in the room was given some confidential information, then passed it to me. As I read it, they studied my facial expressions. The documents they had pressed into my hands set out the government’s Three-Step Plan:
The Final Test: At the end of January 2018, they unexpectedly summoned about 100 prisoners into a large room. A man in a black mask and lace-up leather boots stepped into the middle of the semi-circle and called on of the girls forward to confess her crime, surrounded by onlookers. She hadn’t been there long: she was a little plump and shaved bald like everyone else. She was maybe 20 or 21 years old. As instructed, she made her confession in Chinese: “When I was in Year Nine, I texted a friend on my mobile phone to wish her a blessed holiday. It was a religious occasion and a crime. I will never do it again.” Party officials had found this years-old text while checking her phone. “Lie down!” ordered one of the masked men. One of them tore off her trousers with a jerk, then unzipped his own. “No!” screamed the girl, horrified, and tried to jump up, fending off the man with her hands, but a moment later he forced her to the ground and pinned her down with his whole weight. A few onlookers collapsed and cried out loud. Instantly, they were grabbed, still in their chains and dragged away. Suddenly, I understood why we were there. It was a test! They wanted to see whether we had been “cured” of our “sick religious thinking” and brought into line with the Party.
Nothing was worse than being a helpless bystander witnessing this deranged torture. When the first man was finished and pulled his trousers back up, like a hyena having eaten its fill, the second masked man set upon the abused body on the floor. Some of the male prisoners couldn’t stand it anymore. Leaping up from their seats. Immediately, the guards grabbed them and led them away. All of them disappeared. Even after I was free, I couldn’t bring myself to tell that story for months, because talking about it made me feel like it was happening all over again. As long as I live, I will never forget it. I simply cannot come to terms with it.
MARCH 2018: RELEASED At midnight, an unfamiliar officer sat hunched over the desk. He barked at me, “Your work here is over! You are going home today and will continue your job as head teacher at the kindergarten. When they pulled the hood off my head, I could scarcely believe my eyes. It was the end of March, maybe four in the morning, and I was standing next to my house. When I saw myself in the mirror the next morning – for the first time in months – I was shocked. A pale mask made of skin and bone stared back at me. My collarbones were poking out like a skeleton’s.
Source: The Chief Witness: Escape from China’s Modern-Day Concentration Camps by Sayragul Sauytbay and Alexandra Cavelius (2021)
AFTERWORD: Sauytbay’s book The Chief Witness was written by Alexandra Cavelius in German in mid-2020 and translated to English in May 2021. Cavelius wrote an afterword whose excerpts follow.
While Sayragul Sauytbay and I were on a press tour for our book in June 2020, sitting on a train from Berlin to Munich. All of a sudden, Sayragul’s eye was caught by a video from the 19th Party congress in Beijing, where high-ranking Party officials were giving speeches before a large audience.
“What is he saying?” “He says that by 2049, the Chinese educational system will be accepted world-wide as the primary system of education.” “How exactly does he phrase it?” “By that point, the global education system will be led and governed by the CCP. China will decide what kind of educational system the world has. The whole world will obey the CCP and only use the materials provided to them by the Party.” I could barely stay in my seat. “Go on …” “The Chinese system will be introduced in every school worldwide. All students will be given Chinese materials and speak Chinese.” Here I couldn’t help blurting out, “They’re not even making a secret of their plans for global dominance. This speech by Chen Baosheng is another key piece of evidence to support the Three-Step Plan!” If you put together all the reports and all the individual pieces of the puzzle it reveals exactly what the Party officials have in mind for the world. It means censorship, propaganda, corruption, lies, racism, torture camps, and fascism.
Source: The Chief Witness by Sayragul Sauytbay and Alexandra Cavelius (2021).
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
RE-EDUCATION CAMPS – EXCERPTS
NOTE: All the excerpts are from The Chief Witness by Sayrabul Sauytbay (2021).
INTRODUCTION: Since ancient times, China’s north-west province Xinjiang has been home to a predominantly Uighur population, but there are also numerous other ethnicities represented, including Mongolians, Kyrgyzstanis, Tartars, and the second-largest group, the Kazakhs, to which I belong. Our province was called East Turkestan until, in 1949, China violently annexed the whole region. Officially, Beijing guarantees the indigenous people here autonomy, independence, and free will. Unofficially, however, the government treats us like a colony of slaves.
Since 2016, our province has been transformed into the largest surveillance state in the world. A network of more than 1,200 internment camps exists above ground, but there are increasing reports of subterranean camps as well. We estimate that approximately three million people are currently begin detained. They have never stood trail. They have never committed a crime. This is the biggest systematic internment of a single ethnic group since the Third Reich. In East Turkestan, every scrap of information is controlled. Uncensored books and magazines, and social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp, are forbidden.
One in ten Muslims in my home province is currently interned. The evidence for these camps is overwhelming – we have satellite images and documented witness statements – so Beijing has finally admitted their existence, after long denying it. Yet senior Chinese politicians continue to talk euphemistically about “vocational training centers.” The official Party line is that the foreign media are “spreading malicious lies,” that all the “students” are there of their own free will, and that most have already been released anyway. Anyone who tells the truth about these camps in East Turkestan is branded a foreign spy, a liar, or a terrorist. Chinese censors immediately erase all the information available online, and anyone who passes on this information within China vanishes without a trace the very next day.
My situation is unusual, because I was put to work as a teacher in one of these camps. This position offered me an insight into the innermost workings of the system: and what I saw was a meticulously detailed, carefully considered piece of bureaucratic machinery that operated according to explicit instructions from Beijing. This wasn’t just about systematic torture, humiliation, and brainwashing. This was the deliberate extermination of an entire ethnic group.
As a chief witness, I’ve shared my knowledge of the inner workings of this fascist system. I speak not just for myself, but in the name of all the people held in these concentration camps, and for those who are in fear of their lives under this dictatorship. The goal of China’s campaign is to achieve political control of the entire world. This is why my advice to all other countries is this: “Don’t avert your gaze from East Turkestan! This is how your children and grandchildren will be living in the future if you don’t defend your freedoms!”
LIFE IN EAST TURKESTAN -- RE-EDUCATION CAMPS: Police cars patrolled the streets 24 hours a day, sirens on and light flashing. No respite. Nobody was allowed to speak out. Officers in uniform might show up unexpectedly at any time to drag people away. Some they shook awake in the middle of the night; others were informed in advance that they would be brought to a re-education camp in the next couple of days. Several people hanged themselves in their homes before they could be taken. Many children were left behind with no one to look after them, so the CCP took them to an orphanage. Others died on the street.
LATE 2017: ARRIVING AT THE CAMP: The doors burst open, and four policemen with machine guns jumped out. Seconds later, they grabbed me by the sleeves, thrown a hood over my head, and shoved me into the back seat. I’d been taken in before, of course, but this time I knew: It’s finally happening. They’re taking me to a camp. My life is over.
LIFE IN THE CAMP: Ahead of me and slightly to the left was a small hall. On the left, a corridor roughly 25 meters long branched off from the hall, with 12 cells on either side. Later, I noticed that men and women were kept on separate sides. The door of each cell was triple-locked and secured with an additional iron bolt. Two guards were assigned outside, working in shifts, 24/7. The reason they went to such extraordinary lengths was because they were terrified that prisoners might break out and bring their atrocities to light. There were cameras on both sides, every two meters. Not a single nook or cranny was left unobserved. There were no windows anywhere.
At six on the dot, all the doors on both corridors opened automatically. From the open doors of the prisoners’ cells came an abominable stench of sweat, urine and feces, wafting across the hall and permeating the whole block. The Blue-uniformed guards wore masks whenever they entered the cells. At this point, I didn’t yet realize that the regulations stipulated each individual should have one square meter of space. In reality they would cram up to 20 people into 16 square meters. On the bare concrete floor was a plastic rollout mattress as thin as two shopping bags, plus a flimsy pillow and a thin plastic blanket. There were approximately 400 prisoners per level. They only allowed on plastic bucket with a lid per cell, which served as a toilet. The prisoners were only allowed to empty it once in a 24-hour period. If after five hours, the bucket was full, the lid had to stay on. So even if the prisoners’ bladders were bursting or their bowels were rumbling, they had to wait until the bucket was empty. Over time, this led to terrible organ problems in some individuals, and the air was so foul it made everyone nauseous.
Conversation was forbidden. Every single procedure in the camp was organized down to the most minute detail. At the end of the corridor there was a window-sized aperture in the wall, through which a Chinese kitchen assistant pushed plates of food. As an indigenous woman I was given one piece of steamed, mushy white bread and a small ladle of cooked rice water with a few floating grains of rice.
Teaching the Living Dead: I’d scarcely set foot in the room before my 56 students rose to their feet, ankle shackles jangling and shouted, “We’re ready!” They all wore blue shirts and trousers. Their heads were shaved, their skin white as a corpse’s. I stood to attention in front of the board, flanked either side by two guards with automatic rapid-fire guns. I was so unprepared for the sight and so appalled that for a moment I almost tottered on to my feet. Black eyes, mutilated fingers, bruises everywhere. A cohort of the living dead, freshly risen from the grave. There were no tables or ordinary chairs, only plastic stools meant for kindergarteners. For an adult, it wasn’t easy to sit upright, especially if you were in pain, like some of the men in blood-soaked trousers, whose hemorrhoids had burst. Roughly 60% were men between the ages of 18 and 50. The rest were girls, women, and elderly people. In the first two was the youngest a schoolgirl 13 years old – tall, thin, very clever. With her bald head, I’d first took her for a boy. The eldest, a sheepherder who joined us later was 84. Fear was etched into every face.
Water Soup and Fresh Instructions: From midday till two, the guards put all the prisoners back into their cells and the staff back into their rooms. Minutes later, I was in the kitchen queue with the other workers, ladle in hand. This time, I was handed a small piece real bread and bland vegetable soup that was more water than vegetable. Sometimes I’d even get a spoonful of honey. Every day, they alternated these three different meals, morning, noon and night. For months. The prisoners were virtually left to starve, although, unlike me, they were forced to eat pork every Friday. Initially, some Muslims refused. Their protests resulted in nothing but torture and unforgettable pain. After a while, these people ate the pork, too.
Self-Reflection: The next two hours were primarily about sitting still and reflecting on one’s mistakes. This time, I remained in the background. The two heavily armed guards, plus two or three Chinese employees from other departments, planted themselves in front of me. One of them raised his voice. “If you acknowledge your crimes quickly and try to make them right, you will be released sooner.” In case they didn’t understand Chinese, I had to translate it into Kazakh.
Some of the prisoners didn’t know why they were in the camp, the employees explained. They might be guilty of praying, of holding quite ordinary religious views, or of harboring negative thoughts about the Chinese language, Chinese customs, of the Chinese in general. In fact, there were hundreds of different reasons why all these people had been arrested. A photo taken with the wrong individual was all it took. Anybody who maintained their innocence was not only punished but found their relatives had been detained. And confessions had to sound believable.
A Break and an Evening Meal: The prisoners lined up outside their cells: women on one side, men on the other. Down the middle of the floor ran a straight red line, framed either side by a blue line. They had to move unswervingly along this red line. Shackled at the wrist and ankle, they were only able to take small, shuffling steps.
“I’m a Criminal!”: The prisoners were dismissed into their cells to “accept their crimes internally.” This meant concentrating on them fervently and repeating their offences over and over in hushed tones. “I’m a criminal because I prayed. I’m a criminal because I prayed. I’m a criminal …”
Written Confessions: Every inmate spent two hours hunched over their notebook on the floor of their cell, writing down their admissions of guilt. As long as the prisoners were awake, the staff were trying to control their thoughts. Even when they were finally left alone, I don’t know how so many people were able to rest in such a confined space. They had to sleep pushed up against one another, on the right sides, chained at the wrists and ankles. Turning over was strictly forbidden and would be harshly punished.
1 AM to 6 AM: Sleep: After I was relieved of duty, I curled up on the plastic mattress, drew up my knees, and pulled the blanket over my head. The cold oozed up out of the concrete floor and into my bones. Usually, in an attempt to stay a little warmer and more comfortable, I kept my uniform on. Sleep was impossible, although I was utterly exhausted. The stench of the toilets, the screams still echoing in my ears, the unbearable things I’d seen – I was so shocked and frightened that every muscle was tense. For days, life in the camp was exactly the same. Artificial light 24 hours a day. Locked in a concrete coffin. Before long, you didn’t know if it was day or night.
Showering: After a while, the prisoners’ clothes would stick to their bodies. They stank of sweat and dirt, but they were only allowed to wash once every month or two.
The Black Room: The space, roughly 20 meters square, looked a bit like a darkroom. In the middle was a table three of four meters long, crammed with all kinds of tools and torture devices. Tasers and police cudgels in various shapes and sizes; thick, thin, long and short. Iron rods used to fix the hands and feet in agonizing positions behind a person’s back, designed to inflict the maximum possible pain. The walls were hung with weapons and implements that looked like they were from the Middle Ages. Implements used to pull out fingernails and toenails, and a long stick – a bit like a spear – that had been sharpened like a dagger at one end. They used it for jabbing into a person’s flesh. Along one side of the room was a row of chairs designed for different purposes. Electric chairs and metal chairs with bars and straps to stop the victim moving; iron chairs with holes in the back so that the arms could be twisted back above the shoulder joint. My gaze wandered across the walls and floors. Rough cement. Grey and dirty, revolting and confusing – as though evil itself was squatting in that room feeling our pain. I was certain I would die by dawn.
Two men were standing in front of me. They expected me to confess my guilt and make up a crime, even though I hadn’t done anything. I was terrified they would strap me into the “tiger chair” with the nails or cut me open with a scalpel, but they had chosen the electric chair. Suddenly, my whole body was shaking and twitching as though it was no longer my own. At the same, blows started raining down. My head hanging, I saw the lace-up boots in front of my face. “You’re a conspirator! You’re lying,” the mask man roared. Then they hit me on the shoulder, on the head, the hands, until I collapsed again.
The longer it took me to answer or to confess my guilt, the more they upped the current. I had to tell them what they wanted to hear. My torturers had no humanity, no sympathy or emotion. They were like rabid dogs on a chain. Vicious and wild. Those men didn’t see us a people – we were more like test animals or lab rats. I kept losing consciousness because of the electric shocks. It was obvious how much satisfaction they took in the suffering of others. They laughed while they were doing it. The more they heard me whimpering with pain, the more clearly I saw the pleasure on the face of the unmasked man and the more avidly they tortured me. You must not show pain.
Medical Annihilation: After a while, they prescribed me medication. Some prisoners clamped their mouths shut out of fear, and others whimpered that they didn’t want any medicine, but nobody was let off. The medics would forcibly open their prisoners’ jaws and give them the drug. After that, many of the women stopped having periods. They weren’t experimenting on us. They didn’t just want to make us numb or permanently insane. They were trying to annihilate us.
State Secrets: The Three-Step Plan: Some new National Security officials were in one of our rooms. The most senior person in the room was given some confidential information, then passed it to me. As I read it, they studied my facial expressions. The documents they had pressed into my hands set out the government’s Three-Step Plan:
- Step One: 2014 -2015 Assimilate those who are willing in Xinjiang and eliminate those who are not.
- Step Two: 2025 – 2035: After assimilation within China is complete, neighboring countries will be annexed.
- Step Three: 2035 – 2055: After the realization of the Chinese dream comes the occupation of Europe.
The Final Test: At the end of January 2018, they unexpectedly summoned about 100 prisoners into a large room. A man in a black mask and lace-up leather boots stepped into the middle of the semi-circle and called on of the girls forward to confess her crime, surrounded by onlookers. She hadn’t been there long: she was a little plump and shaved bald like everyone else. She was maybe 20 or 21 years old. As instructed, she made her confession in Chinese: “When I was in Year Nine, I texted a friend on my mobile phone to wish her a blessed holiday. It was a religious occasion and a crime. I will never do it again.” Party officials had found this years-old text while checking her phone. “Lie down!” ordered one of the masked men. One of them tore off her trousers with a jerk, then unzipped his own. “No!” screamed the girl, horrified, and tried to jump up, fending off the man with her hands, but a moment later he forced her to the ground and pinned her down with his whole weight. A few onlookers collapsed and cried out loud. Instantly, they were grabbed, still in their chains and dragged away. Suddenly, I understood why we were there. It was a test! They wanted to see whether we had been “cured” of our “sick religious thinking” and brought into line with the Party.
Nothing was worse than being a helpless bystander witnessing this deranged torture. When the first man was finished and pulled his trousers back up, like a hyena having eaten its fill, the second masked man set upon the abused body on the floor. Some of the male prisoners couldn’t stand it anymore. Leaping up from their seats. Immediately, the guards grabbed them and led them away. All of them disappeared. Even after I was free, I couldn’t bring myself to tell that story for months, because talking about it made me feel like it was happening all over again. As long as I live, I will never forget it. I simply cannot come to terms with it.
MARCH 2018: RELEASED At midnight, an unfamiliar officer sat hunched over the desk. He barked at me, “Your work here is over! You are going home today and will continue your job as head teacher at the kindergarten. When they pulled the hood off my head, I could scarcely believe my eyes. It was the end of March, maybe four in the morning, and I was standing next to my house. When I saw myself in the mirror the next morning – for the first time in months – I was shocked. A pale mask made of skin and bone stared back at me. My collarbones were poking out like a skeleton’s.
Source: The Chief Witness: Escape from China’s Modern-Day Concentration Camps by Sayragul Sauytbay and Alexandra Cavelius (2021)
AFTERWORD: Sauytbay’s book The Chief Witness was written by Alexandra Cavelius in German in mid-2020 and translated to English in May 2021. Cavelius wrote an afterword whose excerpts follow.
While Sayragul Sauytbay and I were on a press tour for our book in June 2020, sitting on a train from Berlin to Munich. All of a sudden, Sayragul’s eye was caught by a video from the 19th Party congress in Beijing, where high-ranking Party officials were giving speeches before a large audience.
“What is he saying?” “He says that by 2049, the Chinese educational system will be accepted world-wide as the primary system of education.” “How exactly does he phrase it?” “By that point, the global education system will be led and governed by the CCP. China will decide what kind of educational system the world has. The whole world will obey the CCP and only use the materials provided to them by the Party.” I could barely stay in my seat. “Go on …” “The Chinese system will be introduced in every school worldwide. All students will be given Chinese materials and speak Chinese.” Here I couldn’t help blurting out, “They’re not even making a secret of their plans for global dominance. This speech by Chen Baosheng is another key piece of evidence to support the Three-Step Plan!” If you put together all the reports and all the individual pieces of the puzzle it reveals exactly what the Party officials have in mind for the world. It means censorship, propaganda, corruption, lies, racism, torture camps, and fascism.
Source: The Chief Witness by Sayragul Sauytbay and Alexandra Cavelius (2021).
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| china_e2l_re-education_--_epilogue_2.pdf |