5.2 SURVIVOR ACCOUNTS OF TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT Amnesty International interviewed numerous former camp detainees who were tortured or subjected to other ill-treatment during interrogations or punishments.488 This mistreatment usually took place in interrogation or punishment rooms. These rooms were usually windowless and contained at least one tiger chair, which was used for interrogations. Three former detainees reported that tiger chairs were brought into their cells.489 Three other former detainees reported being punished in rooms with multiple tiger chairs.490 17 former detainees told Amnesty they were interrogated or punished in a tiger chair or other metal chair.491 Interrogations usually lasted an hour or more; punishments were often much longer. Several people reported being left restrained in a tiger chair for 24 hours or more.492 Daulet, who was detained for an offence related to the practice of Islam, told Amnesty International that during the year he spent in an internment camp he was taken to punishment rooms twice, where he was immobilized in a tiger chair. The first time was for making his bed too early in the morning. The second time he was taken along with the rest of his cellmates; they were punished collectively because one member of the cell had spoken in Kazakh.
[The first time] I was taken I was on ‘night duty’ with an old Hui man. It was morning. We thought it was time to start making the beds. Then, on the loudspeaker, someone said it wasn’t time to start making the beds. Then [two guards] came into the room and took [the two of us who were on duty] to the [punishment] room. The room had eight [tiger] chairs. We were there for maybe five hours. We did not have water. There was no food. And no toilet. They opened the window. It was very cold. We stayed strapped in the chair. The chair is metal, and we were cuffed with arms straight out. Our legs were cuffed… The second time, there was a guy [in my cell] who spoke in Kazakh. And the guards asked him if he spoke in Kazakh. And he said ‘no’. And then they took [everyone in the cell] to the tiger chair.493 Assel, an older woman who spent a year in the camp without ever being given a firm reason for her detention – although she believes it was because she had gone to Kazakhstan – was taken to a punishment room because she had argued with a cellmate after trying to defend another woman who was hard of hearing and was being verbally abused. She described being taken by two female guards to a small, dark, cold, and windowless room in the basement of the camp, where she was handcuffed and shackled and made to sit in an iron chair for days:
Two women took me to the room. They held me under my arms. They told me to sit in an iron chair… [They] cuffed my arms and legs… My hands were cuffed to each other, not to the chair… [I was taken because] there was a woman [in my cell] who couldn’t hear well. And there was another Uyghur woman [in the cell] who used to call her names. I said [to the Uyghur woman], ‘Why are you taking advantage of her? You shouldn’t do that!’ [Then an argument started.] Then the guards came [in the cell] and asked us what happened, and they took me to this room… It was a dark room. No toilet in it. Just a bucket… There was no bed, just a chair. They brought one piece of bread and water. I was getting pretty 488 489 490 491 492 493
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“LIKE WE WERE ENEMIES IN A WAR” CHINA’S MASS INTERNMENT, TORTURE AND PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN XINJIANG Amnesty International
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