Chinese President Xi Jinping has become the chief architect of the biggest extermination campaign of the 21st century - the Uighur genocide in Xinjiang. According to interviews and raw data, China wants to end the Uighur people. There are nearly a million of them in forced labour camps.
Tur Sunay Ziyawudun, a Uighur woman was detained twice by the Chinese. Her second stint lasted nearly ten months. On Thursday, she testified at the US Capitol.
"I was taken on March 8, 2018, and kept there for more than 10 months. Buses would arrive every day with more detainees. It was very overcrowded. There was a bucket in the corner for a toilet and cameras watching us inside the cell," Ziyawudun said.
"We were always hungry. Each meal was a watery soup and a bun. We were given injections of unknown medications. Every day we had to endlessly swear loyalty to the Chinese government and reject our faith. We had to watch endless videos about Xi Jinping," she said.
The testimony is a long list of human rights violations, forced detention, overcrowded cells, surveillance cameras, scientific experimentation and brainwashing.
"Girls would be taken away and only be brought back days later. I saw girls lose their sanity because of it and then I myself was taken, along with another woman. I was tortured with an electric stick pushed inside my genital tract. I could hear the other woman's screams in the next room," Ziyawudun said.
"I knew the guards were raping her. After that, she never stopped crying. One time an order came, all the women had to be sterilized or fitted with an IUD. Many young women were crying, screaming when they were told they would be sterilized and could never have children. I left the camp in December 2018. before my release, the officials warned me, if I spoke about my experience there would be heavy consequences, she added.
"I still did not feel free. One day I saw a former cellmate. She had survived but she was dead inside, completely finished by the rapes. The government's goal is to destroy everyone."
Rape and sexual violence are the norms inside these camps. They are used as tools of torture. All of it sanctioned and carried out by the Chinese government.
China is trying to systematically dehumanise Uighurs, remove their culture and identity and replace it with the Han culture.
