Home News 'I begged them to kill me', says this Muslim woman from China

'I begged them to kill me', says this Muslim woman from China

Rida Ghaffar . Tuesday May 21, 2019

. Current Affairs

A Uighur Muslim woman and mother of three said she was tortured and abused at an internment camp where the Chinese government is detaining hundreds of thousands of people from religious minorities. She also told Congressional committee this week that she suffered the loss of a child in this wrath. She initiated for U.S. to take action against China’s mass detention of the Muslim minority.

According to Independent News, Mihrigul Tursun, 29 of age, told reporters in Washington of having been interrogated for four days in a row without sleep. She was forced to have her hair shaved, got electrocuted and was subjected to an intrusive medical examination following her second arrest in China in 2017. After she was arrested a third time, the treatment grew worse. she told journalists at a meeting at the National Press Club:

“I thought that I would rather die than go through this torture and begged them to kill me. They told me my mother and son had died. My father was serving life in prison and that my family was torn apart because of me.”

The claims come amid growing global concern over Chinese treatment of the ethnic minority group, the majority of which are Muslim. China is thought to have incarcerated as many as two million Uighurs in “re-education camps” to promote what the government calls “ethnic unity” in the country’s far west. Until October 2018, Chinese authorities officially denied the existence of the camps. Since then, reports have noted malnourishment, numerous deaths, particularly among the elderly and infirm, and in some cases the forced administration of psychiatric drugs persisted.

The victim said she was raised in China, but shifted to Egypt to study and soon met her husband with whom she had triplets. In 2015, she returned to China to spend time with her family. However, she was immediately detained and separated from her infant children. When she was released three months later, the shattering news of death of one of the triplets bombarded. Meanwhile, the other two had developed health problems. This is because the children had been operated on.

The Muslim woman, according to the Times, again got arrested, after two years. She was then detained again after several months, now third time, and spent three months in a conjested prison cell along with 60 other women. They slept in turns, used the toilet in front of security cameras and sang songs praising China’s Communist Party.

Ms Tursun said she and other victims were forced to take unknown medication, including pills that made them faint. Nine women from her cell had also died during the three months she was there. One day, Ms. Tursun recalled, she was led into a room and placed in a high chair; her legs and arms locked in place. In a statement read by a translator, she 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 further added:

“After being in the camp for three months, I kept having seizures and losing consciousness. The last word I heard them saying is that you being an Uighur is a crime.”

She was eventually released so that she could take her children to Egypt, but was ordered to return to China. Once in Cairo, Ms Tursun contacted US authorities and, in September, went to America and settled in Virginia. In the past week, over 270 scholars from 26 countries published a statement condemning the ‘mass human rights abuse and deliberate attacks on indigenous cultures’ in China. Even earlier this month, China said 15 foreign ambassadors, who wrote a letter expressing their concern about the incarcerations, should not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

It is reported that more than a million Han Chinese people have moved into the houses of Uighur Muslim families to report on whether they display Islamic or unpatriotic beliefs. The informants, who describe themselves as “relatives” of the families they are staying with, are said to have received specific instructions on how to get them to let their guard down, including offering them cigarettes and alcohol.

China has claimed the Uighur Muslims are grateful to be detained in mass internment camps, saying it makes their lives more ‘colourful’. The authorities depicted the re-education camps as an attempt to bring the largely Muslim minority into the ‘modern, civiilized’ world. Of course, this all is not how its addressed. Turson urged Congressional committee members to “take strong action” against officials responsible for China’s policy in Xinjiang and to protect vulnerable Uighur refugee communities around the world. The Holy Quran states:

And what is [the matter] with you that you fight not in the cause of Allah and [for] the oppressed among men, women, and children who say, "Our Lord, take us out of this city of oppressive people and appoint for us from Yourself a protector and appoint for us from Yourself a helper?" (Surah Nisa: 75)