Uyghur camp survivor lands in US after a year in exile
Sep 30, 2020
Washington DC [US], September 30 : Tursunay Ziyawudun, one of the few Uyghur concentration camp survivors who managed to escape China has arrived in the United States, according to the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP).
UHRP, a Washington-based organisation in a press release said that Tursunay got released from a camp in December 2018. Thereafter, she managed to leave China and return to Kazakhstan, where she had lived for several years.
"In February 2020, their house near Almaty was set on fire in suspicious circumstances, after she went public with her story. She was subsequently forced to flee Kazakhstan for a temporary stay in a third country," UHRP said in its release.
"We are tremendously relieved that Tursunay is now safe in the United States," said UHRP Executive Director Omer Kanat. "UHRP warmly thanks governments who have rescued at-risk Uyghurs. Every rescue is a godsend," Kanat added.
According to the UHRP, she spent nine months in detention, where she suffered malnutrition, dehydration, forcible ingestion and injection of unknown drugs, and physical and mental torture.
UHRP called on governments and humanitarian-aid groups to stand up an organized program to grant refugee status and provide humanitarian support for thousands of Uyghurs stranded in foreign countries.
China put a million or more Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities into detention camps and prisons in Xinjiang over the last three years, according to the revealed the leaked documents released in US media.
However, China regularly denies such mistreatment and says the camps provide vocational training.
Uyghur activists and human rights groups have countered that many of those held are people with advanced degrees and business owners who are influential in their communities and have no need for any special education.
People in the internment camps have described being subjected to forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings, and denial of food and medicine, and say they have been prohibited from practising their religion or speaking their language.
Now, as Beijing denies these accounts, it also refuses to allow independent inspections into the regions, at the same time, which further fuels reports related to China's atrocities on the minority Muslims.
