Inside China's secret prison: Mass sterilisation, organ extractions and gang rape

In a horrifying account revealed by female survivors who have come forward with gut-wrenching testimonials detailing the torture they endured while being imprisoned in a so-called ‘re-education camp' across the Xinjiang province in the People’s Republic of China. Their stories published by the Daily Mail, alleges sadistic conditions – systematic torture, mass sterilisation, mysterious injections, organ extractions and gang rape.

Prisoners' testimony shows they were being wrapped in a ‘tiger chair’ with their legs tied to a bench as bricks attached to the bottom of their feet forced their legs backwards, causing them unimaginable pain.

Testimony of survivors

Sayragul Sauytbay, a Uyghur Muslim, in 2017, was forced into a camp to teach other prisoners Mandarin. After being released in a 2019 interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, she detailed the horrific world inside the prison. The prisoners were shackled, sleep deprived and subjected to humiliating punishments. She also described that those punishments were carried out in a 'black room'. She compared the savagery of those prisons in the Xinjiang region with that of the Jewish concentration camps.

She described a gruesome incident where an elderly woman's skin was removed from her body slowly, for a minor act of defiance. Other tortures included being forced to sit on a chair covered with nails, beatings with electrified truncheons and having fingernails torn out.

She also said there was constant surveillance with cameras and a centralised control room just like the 'panopticon' conceived by Jeremy Bentham.

Women were raped and others were forced to watch the act and guards were monitoring their reaction.

'While they were raping her they checked to see how we were reacting. People who turned their head or closed their eyes, and those who looked angry or shocked, were taken away and we never saw them again,' said Sauytbay ‘It was awful. I will never forget the feeling of helplessness, of not being able to help her.’

Mihirgul Tursun, a prisoner who escaped a detention camp, detailed the torture and abuse she experienced at the hands of Chinese authorities. In a 2018 press conference in Washington, she said that she was interrogated for four days without sleep. She was forced to shave her head and was subjected to intrusive medical examinations. She recalled one incident where she was taken to a room where she was placed in a high chair, and her legs and arms were locked in place.

'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,' Tursun said.

'I don't remember the rest. White foam came out of my mouth, and I began to lose consciousness,' Tursun said. 'The last word I heard them saying is that you being a Uyghur is a crime.'

A more chilling incident, Cheng Pei Ming, a survivor who was persecuted by the Chinese authorities for his religious beliefs. He was taken to a hospital where the doctors pressured him to sign a consent form; on refusing to do so, he was injected with a substance which made him unconscious. When he woke up, he saw a large incision down the left side of his chest. On thorough examination, he figured out that part of his lung and liver had been taken.

China denies any claims of wrongdoing; however, according to the report by Daily Mail, they admitted that organs were taken from executed prisoners up until 2015.

Human rights situation of Uyghur Muslims

According to rights groups, since 2014, China has committed serious human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. Over a million people are suffering in concentration camps, which the Chinese authority calls re-education camps. In addition to the detention camps, there were cases of forced sterilisation, forced contraception, and forced abortion. According to the statistics of the Chinese government, the birth rate of Uyghurs fell by 60 per cent in 2017-18.

Speaking at the 59th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, World Uyghur Congress former president and a leading Uyghur rights advocate, Dolkun Isa, said, "The situation of Uyghurs in East Turkestan is still dire. Still, a million people are suffering in concentration camps. Forced labour is still an issue. There are still one million Uyghur children separated from their families and subjected to forced labour. Forced separation is still the case in East Turkestan."

"In the last couple of years, the Chinese government has been organising propaganda tours, bringing some journalists, particularly from Global Sources and even some Western countries, inviting them and just showing them around. They use these delegations as propaganda tools, trying to whitewash the ongoing genocide in East Turkestan against the Uyghurs," he said

Chinese security agencies started an orchestrated campaign against Uyghurs in 1996, after alleged separatism and illegal religious activities, prompting many to flee to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Central Asian Republics. Many critics say US security agencies were involved in stirring up unrest in the Xinjiang region. The crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party has been hard, while many equate it to another genocide.