'Thank the Party!' China tries to brainwash Muslims in camps
Posted May 16, 2018 7:27 pm PDT
Last Updated May 16, 2018 at 11:40 pm PDT
ALMATY, Kazakhstan – Day after day, Omir Bekali and other detainees in far western China’s new indoctrination camps had to disavow their Islamic beliefs, criticize themselves and their loved ones and give thanks to the ruling Communist Party.
When Bekali, a Kazakh Muslim, refused, he was forced to stand at a wall for five hours at a time. A week later, he was sent to solitary confinement and deprived of food for 24 hours. After 20 days, he wanted to kill himself.
“The psychological pressure is enormous, when you have to criticize yourself, denounce your thinking — your own ethnic group,” said Bekali, 42, who broke down in tears while describing the camp. “I still think about it every night, until the sun rises.”
Since last spring, Chinese authorities in the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang have ensnared tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese — and even foreign citizens — in mass internment camps. This detention campaign has swept across Xinjiang, a territory half the area of India, leading to what a U.S. commission on China last month said is “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”
The internment program tries to rewire the political thinking of detainees, erase their Islamic beliefs and reshape their very identities. Chinese officials have largely avoided comment, but some have said in state media that ideological changes are needed to fight separatism and Islamic extremism. Radical Muslim Uighurs killed hundreds in China in years past.
Three other former internees and a former instructor in different centres corroborated Bekali’s depiction. Taken together, the recollections offer the most detailed account yet of life inside so-called re-education.
The program is a hallmark of China’s emboldened state security apparatus under the deeply nationalistic, hard-line rule of President Xi Jinping. It is partly rooted in the ancient Chinese belief in transformation through education — taken once before to terrifying extremes during the mass thought reform campaigns of Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader sometimes channeled by Xi.
“Cultural cleansing is Beijing’s attempt to find a final solution to the Xinjiang problem,” said James Millward, a China historian at Georgetown University.
The internment system is shrouded in secrecy, with no publicly available data. The U.S. State Department estimates those being held are “at the very least in the tens of thousands.” A Turkey-based TV station run by Xinjiang exiles said almost 900,000 were detained, citing leaked government documents. Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology, puts the number between several hundreds of thousands and just over 1 million, and government bids suggest construction is ongoing.
Asked to comment on the camps, China’s foreign ministry said it “had not heard” of the situation. Chinese officials in Xinjiang did not respond to requests for comment. However, China’s top prosecutor, Zhang Jun, urged Xinjiang’s authorities this month to extensively expand what the government calls “transformation through education” in an “all-out effort” to fight extremism.
China-born Bekali moved to Kazakhstan in 2006 and received citizenship three years later.
On March 25 last year, Bekali visited his parents in Xinjiang. The next day, police took him away.
They strapped him into a “tiger chair” that clamped down his wrists and ankles. They hung him by his wrists against a barred wall. They interrogated him about his work inviting Chinese to apply for Kazakh tourist visas.
“I haven’t committed any crimes!” Bekali yelled.
Seven months later, Bekali was taken out of his cell and handed a release paper. But he was not free.
Bekali was driven to a fenced compound in Karamay, where three buildings held more than 1,000 internees.
They would wake up together before dawn, sing the Chinese national anthem, and raise the Chinese flag at 7:30 am. They sang songs praising the party and studied Chinese language and history. They were told that the indigenous sheep-herding Central Asian people of Xinjiang were backward before they were “liberated” by the Communist Party in the 1950s.
When they ate meals of vegetable soup and buns, they first had to chant: “Thank the Party! Thank the Motherland! Thank President Xi!”
Bekali was kept in a locked room almost around the clock with eight other internees, who shared beds and a wretched toilet. Cameras were installed in toilets and outhouses. Baths were rare, as was washing of hands and feet, equated with Islamic ablution.
In 4-hour sessions, instructors lectured about the dangers of Islam and drilled internees with quizzes that they had to answer correctly or be sent to stand near a wall for hours on end.
“Do you obey Chinese law or Sharia?” instructors asked. “Do you understand why religion is dangerous?”
The detainees had to criticize and be criticized by their peers. One by one, they would also stand up before 60 classmates to present self-criticisms of their religious history.
“I was taught the Holy Qur’an by my father and I learned it because I didn’t know better,” Bekali heard one say.
“I travelled outside China without knowing that I could be exposed to extremist thoughts abroad,” another said. “Now I know.”
After a week, Bekali went to his first stint in solitary confinement. He yelled out to a visiting official.
“Take me in the back and kill me, or send me back to prison,” he shouted. “I can’t be here anymore.”
He was again hauled off to solitary confinement. It lasted 24 hours, ending late afternoon on Nov. 24, when Bekali was suddenly released.
At first, Bekali did not want the AP to publish his account for fear his sister and mother in China would be detained.
But on March 10, the police took his sister, Adila Bekali. A week later, they took his mother, Amina Sadik. And on April 24, his father, Ebrayem.
Bekali changed his mind and said he wanted to tell his story.
“Things have already come this far,” he said. “I have nothing left to lose.”
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Associated Press reporter Dake Kang contributed to this report.
___
Follow Gerry Shih on www.twitter.com/@gerryshih
Auggie Giuseppe
Add a public comment...
Greg Scott
Greg Scott
2 years ago (edited)
2:18 and 7:38 for the two pieces.
17
Tlou Gamer
Tlou Gamer
2 years ago (edited)
look the 6th string in 9:01
22
Raphael Carpenter
Raphael Carpenter
1 year ago
R.I.P. Maestro. You were my favorite guitar composer, arranger, and performer :)
14
Michajeru
Michajeru
2 years ago
The guitar world is so lucky to have this great maestro. I love his compositions, his arrangements, his playing, his musicianship, and his personality.
10
Toka Reva
Toka Reva
1 year ago
That isnt just someone playing guitar. Thats someone making music.
10
Music, Man!
Music, Man!
1 year ago
Merci, Roland.
7
mayank bhadra
mayank bhadra
1 year ago
RIP.
4
John Taillor
John Taillor
1 year ago
Goodnight, RolandRIP
4
Kiên Đặng
Kiên Đặng
1 year ago
RIP him. my Lengend :'(
2
John Smith
John Smith
2 years ago
eeeeeeven if you dont like classical music....or those particular pieces.....how can u dislike this video.....???? sick world my friends.....sick world....
2
Edigar Monteiro
Edigar Monteiro
1 year ago
The best guitarist, composer and arranger of all time!
2
Gentle Rhino
Gentle Rhino
1 year ago
He had this great gift for all of us. RIP, great master.
2
Frankie Paradiso
Frankie Paradiso
1 year ago
What a wonderful guitarist, arranger, composer, humourist and personality! Ah, to join just one of his masterclasses... but I'm not a master and I live far away in Indonesia...
5
WindowCat
WindowCat
2 years ago
That guitar sounds amazing! Who cares where Chopin was from...
1
Gabriel Baldwin
Gabriel Baldwin
1 year ago
Goodbye Maestro.
1
Lucygeno
Lucygeno
2 years ago
BRAVO!!!!!!
1
Jerom
Jerom
1 year ago
That first piece especially seems almost unhumanly hard. That is the only thing that gives away that it might not have been written for guitar, or certainly not for us mortals playing the guitar. Roland Dyens really is an amazing guitarist and composer.
1
cantaclaro2
cantaclaro2
2 years ago
From the start 2:25 give the impression that the guitar is not completly in tune (5) (exac tuning) maybe I am wrong ,doesn't help the unbalanced harmonics. More than an arrangement seems a transcription of Tchaikovsky's Barcarolle, however it's difficult to establish the boundaries between an "arrangement" or" transcription" .Beautifully played.I don't find funny make jokes to be more French than Napoleon , taking in account the fact that Mr Dyens isn't 100% French , and Chopin after all gave his talent and heart to Poland.
1
sprucesp
sprucesp
1 year ago
RIP Maestro.
1
Brian Richard
Brian Richard
2 years ago
This brought me to tears less than 10 seconds after he touched the strings. Amazing.
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