Speaking to reporters at the National Press Club at Washington, Mihrigul Tursun, a member of the Uighur Muslim community in China, described her torture at the hands of the communist government. The Chinese authorities are believed to have detained over a million Uighurs in concentration camps.
Tursun said that authorities interrogated her for four consecutive days without sleep, her hair was shaved and she was subjected to intrusive medical examination following her second arrest in 2017. The treatment grew worse when she was arrested the third time.
“I thought that I would rather die than go through this torture and begged them to kill me,” Tursun said. “The authorities put a helmet-like thing on my head, and each time I was electrocuted, my whole body would shake violently and I would feel the pain in my veins,” she said in a statement read by a translator. “I don’t remember the rest. White foam came out of my mouth, and I began to lose consciousness,” Tursun added. “The last word I heard them saying is that you being a Uighur is a crime.”
On Monday, 270 scholars from 26 countries issued a statement on what they call “mass human rights abuses and deliberate attacks on indigenous cultures” taking place in China. “In the camps, these detainees, most of whom are Uighur, are subjected to deeply invasive forms of surveillance and psychological stress as they are forced to abandon their native language, religious beliefs and cultural practices,” the statement said. “Outside of the camps, more than 10 million Turkic Muslim minorities in the region are subjected to a dense network of surveillance systems, checkpoints, and interpersonal monitoring which severely limit all forms of personal freedom.”
“The United States will continue to call on China to end these counterproductive policies and free all those arbitrarily detained,” the State Department said. “We are committed to promoting accountability for those who commit human rights violations and abuses, including by considering targeted measures against Xinjiang officials.”
We have reported earlier on the cruel treatment meted out to Uighurs in China. Despite its terrible human rights violations, the Chinese have attracted very little retribution from the international community. Even Islamic countries, most notably Pakistan, appears to have no qualms with associating themselves with the Chinese regime.
