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Teaching the living dead: My classroom in Xinjiang

Teaching the living dead: My classroom in Xinjiang

The Sydney Morning Herland. 30 April 2021

Below is an article published by The Sydney Morning Herald. Photo:AFP.

I stood to attention in front of the board, flanked either side by two guards with automatic guns. I was so unprepared for the sight and so appalled that for a moment I almost tottered on my feet. Black eyes, mutilated fingers, bruises everywhere.

A cohort of the living dead, freshly risen from the grave.

There were no tables or ordinary chairs, only plastic stools meant for kindergarteners. For an adult, it wasn’t easy to sit upright, especially if you were in pain, like some of the men in blood-soaked trousers, whose haemorrhoids had burst.

Ten or 12 people crouched in five rows: academics, farmers, artists, students, businesspeople … roughly 60 per cent were men between the ages of 18 and 50. The rest were girls, women, and elderly people. In the first row was the youngest, a schoolgirl 13 years old — tall, thin, very clever. With her bald head, I’d first taken her for a boy. The eldest, a shepherd who joined us later, was 84.

Fear was etched into every single face. All light in their eyes had gone out. No spark of hope to be seen. I stood there in shock, feeling my mouth tremble. All I wanted to do was cry. Don’t make any mistakes now, Sayragul! I screamed inwardly at myself. Or pretty soon you’ll be sitting on one of those kids’ stools as well!

One inmate after another spoke up.

“Number one is present.”

“Number two is present.”

And so on until number 56. After the roll call, the guards handed everyone a pen and a small booklet. As the inmates were supposed to take notes, their handcuffs had already been removed when they went to fetch food, and now hung clinking loosely from one wrist. Over the course of the day, the prisoners filled out the exam questions in the booklets.

At first I couldn’t squeeze out a single word. It was like my throat was clamped shut — but compassion was forbidden. On pain of death. Spinning on my heel, I grabbed the blackboard and started writing in chalk, speaking in a rough voice. When I turned back around, I kept my eyes fixed on the back wall. I couldn’t bear looking into those faces. The walls were crudely plastered in grey concrete, like the walls of a factory.

There was a red line drawn on the floor in front of me, which I couldn’t cross without permission from the guards — and then only if I had something important to do on the other side. It was a way of avoiding any familiarity or relationship developing between me and the prisoners. I was never allowed to get close to them. A table and a basic plastic chair were provided for me, but oddly the guards moved them aside at the beginning of every lesson.

Both women and men had to sit ramrod-straight on their stools, staring straight ahead. No one was allowed to drop their head. Anyone who didn’t follow the rules was immediately dragged away. To the torture room. “He’s doing it on purpose! He’s refusing to fall into line and resisting the power of the state!” — that was the standard accusation.

From 7am to 9am, it was my job to teach these poor, maltreated creatures about the 19th Party Congress and Chinese customs. “When a Chinese person gets married or has a family, it’s different than with us Muslims,” I began, keeping it as simple as possible. Many farmers had no idea, because in the mountains they’d never experienced anything except their own culture. For them, I had to explain every single step of these ceremonies.

“At Chinese weddings, the guests always have to say the same set phrases when they congratulate the couple,” I added. “For example ‘I wish you both much happiness and I hope you have a baby soon’.”

They sat in front of me with dismal faces, those shaven-headed living dead, and there I was, teaching them ways to say congratulations in Chinese.

From 9am to 11am I went through the material again so I could check it afterwards. “It’s time for everyone to check their notes now!” a guard told me, and I translated for the prisoners. If anybody didn’t understand something, they were supposed to ask.

When a hand was raised, I first looked at the armed guard to my right, making sure the question was allowed. Once permission was granted, the shackled prisoner would ask his question in his mother tongue, assuming he didn’t speak Chinese well enough. If so, I first had to translate the question for the guard and wait to be told if and how I should answer. I was constantly switching between Uighur or Kazakh and Chinese.

Occasionally, individual prisoners were called on by the guards to stand up and recite what they had learned. Those who made progress earned points. “If you learn well, you’ll be released sooner,” they were promised, so everyone tried to absorb the material as fully as possible; only the elderly and the sick, mostly between 60 and 80, found it atrociously difficult.

Most understood little or no Chinese. You could tell how badly they were struggling: the characters danced before their eyes, getting mixed up and tied into knots. It was an impossible task — how were they supposed to cope? How were any of them ever supposed to get out? They wanted to scream and cry, but all of them knew they had to conceal their inner turmoil.

Later on, their answers would be checked by Chinese staff, who would decide who to move down. Anyone who broke the rules outside of class also lost points, which could eventually lead to them being taken to another floor. Infringements, according to the guidelines, were to be punished increasingly harshly. These included moving in the wrong way, not knowing something or crying out in pain.

Like the woman who had undergone brain surgery before being interned at the camp, whose untreated wound grew large and weeping. Or the people who couldn’t sit down after being tortured — reason enough to drag them off and torture them again. Those who were moved up or down were assigned a different uniform and a different floor.

I soon noticed that prisoners in different-coloured uniforms were being led away in groups. Those wearing red, such as imams or very religious people, were branded serious criminals. Less serious crimes were signalled by light-blue clothing. Those accused of the more minor infractions wore dark blue. On my floor, all the prisoners wore light blue, a colour that seemed uglier in my eyes with every passing day. One by one, the less educated and the elderly lost more and more points, until finally they were sorted out like bad peas. Their places were immediately filled with new prisoners.

At 11am the guards handed out one A4-sized cardboard box per prisoner, each inscribed with a phrase in colourful script.

“Number one” held his over his head and said it aloud, and everybody repeated it several times in a row: “I’m proud to be Chinese!”

Then the next person held up theirs: “I love Xi Jinping!”

Those who were not Han Chinese were considered by the Party and the government to be subhuman. Not just Kazakhs and Uighurs, but all other races across the globe. Holding up the next box, I had to add my voice to the clamour: “I owe my life and everything I have to the Party!”

Meanwhile the thought whirling around in my head was: The entire Party elite have lost their minds. They’re all completely nuts.

My gaze wandered aimlessly over their faces, when suddenly I froze. That man with the bald head — I knew him! Yes, he was a Uighur who had been arrested in Aksu in summer 2017 for celebrating a religious festival. It had caused quite a stir locally. At that moment I could see him still, a decent family man, roughly 25 years old, bringing his children to my kindergarten. He’d been such a genteel, happy person. And now? Who was he now? Dead-eyed, open-mouthed, screaming “Long live the Party!”

Suddenly, a guard jabbed me with his machine gun. “Why are you goggling at him like that?“

Frightened, I shouted the next phrase even louder: “Long live Xi Jinping!”

Inwardly, I gave myself a good few mental slaps. There were two guards in the room, not to mention several cameras. How could I have been so stupid?

On and on it went. The Party, its “helmsman” Xi Jinping, China. Everyone was screaming as though with one mouth: “I live because the Party has given me this life!” and “Without the Party there is no new China!”

Their plan was to reshape us into new people, to brainwash us until every single person was convinced. “The Party is everything. It is the most powerful force in the world. There is no god but Xi Jinping, no other almighty country, and no other almighty force in the world but China.”

There were, of course, some weak personalities whose resistance dissolved as though in acid after a while in the camp. But I don’t think this method really works. Lots of the prisoners were simply doing whatever it took to get out of that hellhole. They only pretended to change, acting as though their faith in the goodness and strength of the Party and its leaders made them happy. After the abuse they’d suffered, they couldn’t possibly believe all that nonsense.

Speaking for myself, I never lost my faith in God. Sometimes I risked a glance at the tiny double-barred window on the exterior wall. It was forbidden to look out, but you couldn’t see much anyway. No patch of sky. Only barbed wire.