Former inmates of China’s Muslim ‘reeducation’ camps tell of brainwashing, torture

Washington Post ^ | May 17, 2018 | Simon Denyer

[Zhang Fei]

BEIJING — Kayrat Samarkand says his only “crime” was being a Muslim who had visited neighboring Kazakhstan. On that basis alone, he was detained by police, aggressively interrogated for three days, then dispatched in November to a “reeducation camp” in China’s western province of Xinjiang for three months.

There, he faced seemingly endless brainwashing and humiliation, he said in an interview, and was forced to study communist propaganda for hours every day and chant slogans giving thanks and wishing long life to President Xi Jinping.

“Those who disobeyed the rules, refused to be on duty, engaged in fights or were late for studies were placed in handcuffs and ankle cuffs for up to 12 hours,” he said. Further disobedience would result in waterboarding or long periods strapped in agony in a metal contraption known as a “tiger chair,” Samarkand said, a punishment he said he suffered.

Between several hundred thousand and more than 1 million Muslims have been detained in China’s mass “reeducation” camps in the restive province of Xinjiang, Adrian Zenz of the European School of Culture and Theology in Korntal, Germany, said in a report released Tuesday. Zenz is a leading authority on the current crackdown in Xinjiang.

In a region of 21 million people, including 11 million Muslims, the number of those he reports to be detained would be a significant proportion of the population, especially of young adult men.

“China’s pacification drive in Xinjiang is, more than likely, the country’s most intense campaign of coercive social re-engineering since the end of the Cultural Revolution,” Zenz wrote, referring to the chaos unleashed by Mao Zedong in the 1960s.

“The state’s proclaimed ‘war on terror’ in the region is increasingly turning into a war on religion, ethnic languages and other expressions of ethnic identity,” he wrote.

[Zhang Fei]

The specific things they do to the camp inmates involve haranguing, mild physical restraints and the inclusion of pork in the camp diet. In other words, it's nothing that you wouldn't get at a frat initiation hazing, except it lasts for months. The writer gets all worked up, like these people are being worked to death and the slackers are being sent to other camps where they are being gassed with Zyklon-B. It's clear the current Chinese regime is a non-hereditary absolute monarchy where hereditary Party aristocrats take turns at the wheel. But for now, they're not as intolerant as Muslims, where the choices other than conversion are systematic persecution and random death or exile.

[Lurkinanloomin]

China wants them to stop following the instructions of their prophet which include killing unbelievers.

I’m generally not in favor of re-education camps, but how do we extinguish the madness of Islam before it extinguishes civilization?

[DesertRhino]

Im guessing this has something to do with whining about those wigger Moslem terrorists.
China can do anything... except tell a moslem no.

[A_perfect_lady]

When Communists fight Muslims, I don’t know whom to root for.

[Cicero]

Just so. It’s another case of bad against worse. But which of them is worse?

[Nothingburger]

I never thought I would take the side of communists. But better a commie than a Moslem.

[Brilliant]

“was forced to study communist propaganda for hours every day and chant slogans giving thanks and wishing long life to President Xi Jinping.”

Sounds like the public schools in the US.

[escapefromboston]

China vs Muslims? I got my money on China

[dfwgator]

“Better Red than Achmed!”

[DIRTYSECRET]

Trump should offer them Afghanistan.

[MUDDOG]

They were baconboarded.

[Fiddlstix]

Click the Pic

[PapaBear3625]

Trump should offer them Afghanistan.

If China took him up on the offer, they would know better than to try to "pacify" the area. A government which, without hesitation, killed millions of their own people in the process of maintaining power, would not hesitate to "solve" Afghanistan thru genocide and repopulation with their own people. Maybe spare some of the prettier women to alleviate the Chinese bride shortage.

[gundog]

Except for being fed pork.

[P.O.E.]

No mention of Muslim atrocities over the centuries?

[zipper]

They are treated much better than the 270 million people the Muslims slaughtered over the last 1,400 years.

[Blue Jays]

"...China’s Muslim reeducation camps..."

---

Under normal circumstances, I am a live-and-let-live kind of individual.
In the case of Islam, they are a direct threat to the entire world.

I have met sophisticated, successful, and American-born Muslims at work that one would initially believe are normal friends and colleagues.
They are in fact seething with violent anger. Some openly believe the September 11th attacks were “reasonable” behavior.

Due to the established taqiya concept of intentional lying to confuse non-Muslims, a person is wise to NEVER believe a Muslim.
The only thing they understand is overwhelming might and strength. Get involved with Muslim people at your own peril.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

#6: "But better a commie than a Moslem."

When push comes to shove most commies are pragmatic, not crazy.

You didn't see any commies decide to take a bullet for Nicolae Ceausescu. However, there are hundreds of millions of muslims who would set the world afire, themselves included, all for the sake of Mad Mo and thie Krazy Koran.
 

[Zhang Fei]

[Trump should offer them Afghanistan.]

---

Alternatively, Trump should implement this program in Afghanistan. I don’t think the point of this program is to actually make these people worship the Chinese regime. Rather, it’s to break their spirit, religiously-speaking. The implicit purpose is to corral them for months, impose a routine that, in all but name, makes them renounce any religion where the party leader isn’t the godhead and impress on them that their deity not only cannot protect them - it doesn’t actually exist. And the routine is similar to the kind of thing people use to tame horses, and get them used to the idea of having saddles and riders mounted on their backs. I’d expect this routine to be extended to any religion the party considers a threat to its rule - including Christianity - although the party would have to balance this with the threat of trade sanctions levied by its wealthiest markets in the West.

[PIF]

Days in the notorious ‘tiger chair’ causes swollen legs and buttocks. Picture: Russell Christian/Human Rights Watch
SITTING down may not sound like torture, but for prisoners strapped in metal “tiger chairs” for days, it is sheer agony. “I sat until my buttocks bled,” said one inmate who was restrained in the iron contraption, one of China’s many horrifying instruments of punishment ... this an other methods are freely used once a prisoner has been condemned to death.