Rare First-Hand Evidence of Chinese Persecution of Uighars Has Surfaced

As a model for the massive Chinese online retailer Taobao, the 31-year-old  Merdan Ghappar was once well paid to flaunt his good looks in promotional videos for clothing brands.

But a recent video of Ghappar is different. Instead of a glitzy studio or fashionable city street, the backdrop is a bare room with grubby walls and steel mesh on the window.  Ghappar sits silently with an anxious expression on his face.  Holding the camera with his right hand, he reveals his dirty clothes, his swollen ankles, and a set of handcuffs fixing his left wrist to the metal frame of the bed - the only piece of furniture in the room.

The video of Ghappar, along with a number of accompanying text messages, together provide a chilling and extremely rare first-hand account of China's highly secure and secretive detention system - sent directly from the inside.

The material adds to the body of evidence documenting the impact of China's fight against what it calls the "three evil forces" of separatism, terrorism, and extremism in the country's far western region of Xinjiang.

Over the past few years, credible estimates suggest, more than one million Uighurs and other minorities have been forced into a network of highly secure camps in Xinjiang that China has insisted are voluntary schools for anti-extremism training.

Thousands of children have been separated from their parents and, recent research shows, women have been forcibly subjected to methods of birth control. 

In addition to the clear allegations of torture and abuse, Ghappar's account appears to provide evidence that, despite China's insistence that most re-education camps have been closed, Uighurs are still being detained in significant numbers and held without charge.  It also contains new details about the huge psychological pressure placed on Uighur communities, including a document he photographed which calls on children as young as 13 to "repent and surrender".  

Ghappar's family, who have not heard from him since his messages stopped five months ago, are aware that the release of the four minute, thirty-eight second video of him in his cell might increase the pressure and punishment he faces.  They hope that the public release of the video and messages will help galvanize public opinion over the Chinese abuse of the Uighurs-- which, to date, has failed to resonate deeply in the Western media.

In August 2018, Ghappar was was arrested and sentenced to 16 months in prison for selling marijuana, a charge his friends insist was trumped up.   About a month after his release in November 2019, Chinese police knocked on his door, telling him he needed to return to Xinjiang to complete a routine registration procedure.  According to reports, authorities simply stated that "he needed to do a few days of education at his local community" - a euphemism for the camps.

Friends and family were allowed to bring warm clothes and his phone to the airport, before he was put on a flight from Foshan and escorted by two officers back to his home city of Kucha in Xinjiang.  There is evidence other Uighurs were similarly forced to return home, either from elsewhere in China or from abroad, and Ghappar's family were convinced that he had disappeared into the re-education camps.

But more than a month later they received some extraordinary news-- somehow, he had managed to get access to his phone and was using it to communicate with the outside world.

Merdan Ghappar's text messages paint an even more terrifying picture of his experience after arriving in Xinjiang. Written via the Chinese social media app WeChat, he explains that he was first kept in a police jail in Kucha.

"I saw 50 to 60 people detained in a small room no bigger than 50 square meters, men on the right, women on the left," he writes.  Ghappar was eventually forced to wear the leg shackle device described in his first message and-- with his fellow inmates-- found there was no room to lie down and sleep in the caged area where they were kept.

"I lifted the sack on my head and told the police officer that the handcuffs were so tight they hurt my wrists," he writes in one of the text messages.  "He shouted fiercely at me, saying 'If you remove your hood again, I will beat you to death'. And after that I dared not to talk," he adds.  "Dying here is the last thing I want."

The BBC has reported in detail about how Ghappar heard the constant sound of screaming, coming from elsewhere in the jail.  He also described squalid and unsanitary conditions - inmates suffering from lice while sharing just a handful of plastic bowls and spoons between them all.

It is impossible to independently verify the authenticity of the text messages. But experts say that the Ghappar's video footage appears to be genuine, in particular because of the propaganda messages that can be heard in the background.  James Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University and an expert on China's policies in Xinjiang, translated and analysed Ghappar's text messages.  He says they are consistent with other well documented cases, from his transportation back to Xinjiang and the initial processing in crowded, unsanitary conditions.

Another layer of credibility is provided by a photograph of a document that sources say Mr Ghappar sent after finding it on the floor of one of the epidemic control centre toilets.

The document refers to a speech made by the Communist Party Secretary of Aksu Prefecture, and the date and location suggest it could well have still been circulating in official circles in the city of Kucha around the time of Mr Ghappar's detention.

The document's call for children as young as 13 to be encouraged to "repent for their mistakes and voluntarily surrender" appears to be new evidence of the extent of China's monitoring and control of the thoughts and behaviours of the Uighurs and other minorities.

"I think this is the first time I've seen an official notice of minors being held responsible for their religious activity," says Dr Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder who has researched and written extensively about the Uighurs.

The Chinese government continues to deny that it is persecuting the Uighur population.  After heavy criticism over the issue recently from the U.S., a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, invoked the death of George Floyd, saying that Uighurs in Xinjiang were free in comparison to African Americans in the U.S.

But for Merdan Ghappar's family, haunted by the image of him chained to a bed in an unknown location, there is a connection between the two cases.  "When I saw the George Floyd video it reminded me of my nephew's own video," says Merdan's uncle Abdulhakim.  "The entire Uighur people are just like George Floyd now," he says. "We can't breathe."