time she was interned, described some of the differences in treatment she observed, especially related to detainees’ ability to move around the camp and to communicate with family members.
Most of the people in the strict management group were there for being religious clerics or somehow involved with religion… I know this because interrogations [for detainees] sometimes took place in the staff room where [I spent time]… [In the camp I worked in,] the normal management group learned Chinese and were allowed to walk in the yard; the strict [were allowed to] sit on their beds [some of the time]; and the very strict learned in their cell, were not allowed to move [from their cell], and never got fresh air… The normal group got to make a call once a week and the strict group once every two weeks and visits once a month… The very strict group was not permitted to have visitors.330 With two exceptions, all the former detainees Amnesty interviewed were in the normal management category when they arrived in the camp.331 As a result, nearly all the conclusions in this report – like nearly all the testimonial evidence gathered about the camps from journalists and other organizations – are based on evidence provided by former detainees who experienced only the normal management treatment. However, given the second-hand accounts about the two stricter categories – which are observations made by former detainees and staff who were in the same camps as detainees in the stricter categories – it stands to reason that detainees in the stricter categories were treated much more severely and were much less likely to have been released from a camp and instead remain detained or have been transferred to prison. Baurzhan, one of the two former detainees Amnesty International spoke with who was in the strict category, was given a yellow uniform for part of his stay. His “offence” was related to religion, also suggesting that he was likely in the strict management category during that time. Some of his treatment appears to have been demonstrably worse than that experience by detainees in the normal management category: He was detained for over two years, was not allowed to call family members when others in his camp not detained for religious crimes were, he was never allowed out of his cell, and his feet were continuously shackled together for several months. “For two years, my family didn’t know if I was alive or dead,” Baurzhan told Amnesty.332
4.2 DAILY ROUTINE The life of camp detainees was highly regimented and in many ways reflected, or was even worse than, life in prisons in China. With the exception of a few former detainees describing the portion of their detention that took place in early 2017, every detainee stated that nearly every aspect of their lives in the camps was prescribed, including the position in which they sat, when they stood, and where they looked, and that this was true for every minute of the day.333 Khaina, who said she was detained for having WhatsApp on her phone, told Amnesty International how strict the schedule was and how physically draining each day was:
It was like a prison… [Every day] you got up at 5am and had to make your bed, and it had to be perfect. Then there was a flag-raising ceremony and an ‘oath-taking’. Then you went to the canteen for breakfast. Then to the classroom. Then lunch. Then to the classroom. Then dinner. Then another class. Then bed. Every night two people had to be ‘on duty’ [monitoring the other cellmates] for two hours… There was not a minute left for yourself. You were exhausted.334 330 Amnesty International interviews. 331 Amnesty International interviews. 332 Amnesty International interview. 333 Amnesty International interviews. 334 Amnesty International interview.
“LIKE WE WERE ENEMIES IN A WAR” CHINA’S MASS INTERNMENT, TORTURE AND PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN XINJIANG Amnesty International
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