Gulbahar Haitiwaji knew that China would not be happy about her book describing nearly three years of imprisonment, brainwashing and harassment at the hands of the authorities simply because she is a Uighur.
However, the ferocity with which Beijing has lashed out at the 54-year-old author exceeded her worst expectations.
Branded “a terrorist,” “a separatist” and “a liar” after publishing her book Rescapee du Goulag Chinois (Survivor of the Chinese Gulag) in France, Haitiwaji said she was surprised that nothing seemed to be off-limits — even her personal life, which Chinese officials called “chaotic.”
Photo: AFP
The book, cowritten with French journalist Rozenn Morgat, which is being translated into English, tells the story of her detention in her home region of Xinjiang, in northwestern China.
Haitiwaji had been living in France for a decade when her former employer, a Chinese oil company, asked her in November 2016 to return home to deal with some formalities that it said were linked to her pension rights.
Her husband had traveled to France first, as a political refugee to escape ethnic discrimination.
Haitiwaji joined him four years later. She kept her Chinese passport to at times return home for holidays, and did not feel like a political refugee because she had “no interest in political work.”
She was suspicious of the call from the oil company, but still decided to go, planning to stay for two weeks. She did not return for nearly three years.
Quickly deprived of her passport on arrival, she went through a series of traumatizing experiences, including prison, a re-education camp, interrogations, indoctrinations lasting 11 hours per day and punishment from unforgiving guards for any “mistake” made.
Chained by the ankles, she experienced hunger and fear, and was forced to sit through a mock trial at which she was sentenced to seven years of “re-education.”
She was also forced to sign fake confessions that she said Beijing is now using as proof that she is lying about the whole experience.
“I’ve been telling only the truth. I expected China to deny everything, which is why I gave the context of the confessions in the book — how they made me repeat the same things day in and day out,” Haitiwaji said.
“I just wanted to get out of there, and anybody else would have done the same,” she added.
After initially denying the existence of the Xinjiang camps, China later defended them as vocational training centers aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism.
Beijing last week said that its treatment of ethnic minorities there and in Tibet “stood out as shining examples of China’s human rights progress.”
Yet why, Haitiwaji asked, would China need to “train” a university graduate living in France?
While she was held in China, Haitiwaji’s oldest daughter took her case public in Paris, talking to the media and to officials in the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.
Abruptly, her mother was released from the camp and moved to an apartment, although still under surveillance. Then, equally suddenly, she was freed.
“I think China made an error by coming after me and Uighurs living abroad,” Haitiwaji said. “They did us a favor, they made Uighurs famous.”
“I was never into politics, and I’m still not. I never did anything to harm China, and yet they locked me up and tortured me,” she said.
“All I want is for those camps to close and to help make sure that happens. With help from the West we’ll get there,” she said.
The Chinese embassy in France said that there was no truth to any of Haitiwaji’s claims.
“She was never prosecuted, and the so-called ‘re-education’ doesn’t exist,” it said.
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