'An indispensable account' – Sunday Times
'Moving and devastating' – The Literary Review
'An intimate, highly sensory self-portrait' – Sunday Telegraph (Five Stars)
FIRST MEMOIR ABOUT CHINA'A ‘RE-EDUCATION’ CAMPS BY A UYGHUR WOMAN
Since 2017, one million Uyghurs have been seized by the Chinese authorities and sent to ‘re-education’ camps, in what the US Government and human rights groups describe as a genocide.
Few have made it out to the West. One is Gulbahar Haitiwaji.
For three years, she endured hundreds of hours of interrogations, freezing cold, forced sterilisation, and a programme of de-personalisation meant to destroy her free will and her memories.
This intimate account reveals the long-suppressed truth about China’s gulag. It tells the story of a woman confronted by an all-powerful state bent on crushing her spirit – and her battle for freedom and dignity.
Extract
‘In the camps, the ‘re-education’ process applies the same remorseless method to destroying all its victims. It starts out by stripping you of your individuality. It takes away your name, your clothes, your hair. There is nothing now to distinguish you from anyone else.
'Then the process takes over your body by subjecting it to a hellish routine: being forced to repeatedly recite the glories of the Communist Party for eleven hours a day in a windowless classroom. Falter, and you are punished. So you keep on saying the same things over and over again until you can’t feel, can’t think anymore. You lose all sense of time. First the hours, then the days.’
– Gulbahar Haitiwaji
Reviews
'Gulbahar's memoir is an indispensable account, which makes vivid the stench of fearful sweat in the cells, the newly built prison's permanent reek of white pain. It closely corresponds with other witness statements, giving every indication of being very reliable. Most impressive is her psychological honesty.' – John Phipps, Sunday Times
'Huge efforts have been made to obfuscate the realities of life in the camps (even speaking openly in Xinjiang about them can lead to incarceration). Although their existence has been well documented abroad and grudgingly admitted by the Chinese state, relatively few first-hand accounts of what actually goes on inside them have emerged. One is Gulbahar Haitiwaji's moving and devastating How I Survived a Chinese 'Re-education' Camp.' – Roderic Wye, Literary Review
'There follows an intimate, highly sensory self-portrait, created with the help of Rozenn Morgat (a journalist with Le Figaro), of an educated woman passing through a system that appears at turns cruel, paranoid, capricious and devastatingly effective. It begins with the confiscation of Haitiwaji's passport and a police interrogation during which she is shown a photograph of her daughter attending a Uyghur demonstration in Paris. One of the interrogators starts bawling at her – ‘Your daughter's a terrorist!’ and before long Haitiwaji is plunged into a bewildering world of shackles, bunks and beaten-earth floors; grey gruel and stale bread served up by deaf-mute cooks selected for their silence; the sounds and smells of the communal toilet-bucket; and the buzz of security camera motors as they scan the cell.' ***** – Christopher Harding, Sunday Telegraph
Translated from the French book Rescapée du goulag chinois (Équateurs), How I Survived a Chinese Reeducation Camp is a riveting insight into an authoritarian world.
A true story, it reads like a 21st Century version of George Orwell's 1984 set in modern China.
Tabella dei contenuti
Preface. Rozen Morgan, Le Figaro journalist and co-author, introduces the story of Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur woman who was tricked into returning to China and imprisoned in its ethnic 're-education' camps. The introduction contains an overview of the persecution of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang
Table of Contents. Lists the chapters for this first-hand account by a survivor of China's prison camps, amid the Chinese Communist Party's apparent genocide of members of the Uyghur minority people in the Xinjiang province, in north-west China
1. A Family Wedding. The boisterous Uyghur wedding of Gulbahar's daughter, Gulhumur, sets the scene on the happy days enjoyed by the Haitiwaji family in exile in France. Gulbahar explains her family's history and story in their homeland of Xinjiang, while outlining the persecution of the Uyghurs
2. China Calling. A representative at Gulbahar's former employer asks her to return to China to sign some pension papers. By then Gulbahar had joined her engineer husband Kerim in France. Despite rising persecution of Uyghurs, Gulbahar has returned to Xinjiang several times without incident
3. A Police Interview. When she arrives back in Xinjiang, Gulbahar is questioned and then arrested and grilled by police about whether she supports Uyghur independence, whether she has any links to the World Uyghur Congress, and her daughter's appearance at a Uyghur protest rally in Paris
4. Communist Party Glories. Gulbahar, a Uyghur woman who has committed no crime other than being a Uyghur (Uighur) in Xinjiang, is taken to a prison camp where she is taught to celebrate the glories of the Chinese Communist Party. In the cell, the Uyghur language is banned. Only Mandarin is allowed.
5. Shackled to a Bed. In Cell 202 in a Xinjiang detention centre, Gulbahar discovers the harsh lessons meted out to Uyghur prisoners in the Chinese Communist Party's 're-education' gulag. Xinjiang is earmarked for a key road in Xi Jinping's 'Belt & Road' initiative, also known as China's New Silk Roads
6. Inside Cell 202. Unshackled, Gulbahar is given her original clothes and told she will be leaving for a 'school' where she will be formally 're-educated' out of Uyghur culture and shown a new more fulfilling life as a humble and devoted servant of the Chinese Communist Party
7. ‘School’ with Xi Jinping. At her new 'school' in Baijiantan, Xinjiang, Gulbahar monotonously recites patriotic songs and slogans aimed at ensuring Uyghurs obey the Chinese Communist Party. Mentions Tiananmen Square, communist indoctrination, Chinese patriotic songs
8. Nadira Vanishes. All of a sudden, Gulbahar's cell-mate Nadira, a fellow Uyghur woman, goes missing: no-one knows what has happened to her. At night, Gulbuhar hears the screams of other inmates held in the 'reeducation' facility – Muslim persecution in Xinjiang, Uighur re-education camp, Xi Jinping
9. A Reunion with Hope. Gulbahar is reunited with her two sisters, during a brief visit to the re-education facility at Baijiantan. She asks for news of Kerim, Gulhumur and Gulnigar in France. Mentions Uyghur guards, Uighur genocide, Uighur humans rights abuses, Ürümqi
10. ‘Re-education’ is Working. The endless repetition of songs and slogans starts to erode Gulbahar's soul, diminishing her ability to keep hold of their own feelings and mental stability. Gulbahar is proud of her Uyghur culture, but her own personality and culture are slowing slipping away
11. Losing Body and Mind. After a year's detention, Gulbahar's health starts to deteriorate along with her mental health. The camp's medical staff inject her with ‘a vaccination’ which stops the periods of younger Uyghur women inmates. China has been accused of forcibly sterilising Uyghur women
12. World Discovers the Camps.
Circa l’autore
Gulbahar Haitiwaji worked as a petroleum engineer in Xinjiang, China, before she left with her two daughters, to join her husband Kerim, who had sought asylum in France. She was tricked into returning to China, and vanished into its camps.
Rozenn Morgat is a journalist with Le Figaro. She helped Gulbahar to tell her story, in the hope of alerting the world to what is happening to the Uyghurs.
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