Qalbinur Sidiq’s story begins in the classrooms of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, but it quickly veers into one of the darkest chapters in China’s modern history. In 2017, she was abruptly pulled from her teaching job at a local elementary school and ordered by authorities to serve in a place that officials euphemistically described as a “vocational training center.”
In reality, it was an internment camp—one of hundreds spread across the western region where Beijing has corralled more than a million Muslims, mostly Uyghurs but also Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, and Uzbeks.
“I Heard Screams Every Day”
Sidiq, then 47, was escorted daily by police to the gates of the camp, sworn to secrecy, and forced to teach Chinese to detainees. What she witnessed, she says, will never leave her.
“People were tied up and forced to crawl into the classrooms,” she recalled at a recent event in Sarajevo. “They suffered in every way. Sometimes I would hear screams and cries for help from other rooms.”
The detainees were overwhelmingly Uyghurs, but not the “uneducated extremists” that Chinese authorities claimed the centers were meant to reform. They were community leaders—academics, philanthropists, doctors, and businessmen. “Their only crime,” Sidiq said, “was being Uyghur.”
Inside the camps, detainees were forced to chant patriotic songs, watch Communist Party propaganda, and undergo hours of language drills. Most were confined to overcrowded cells.
Transfer to Women’s Camp
After six months, Sidiq was reassigned to a women’s camp. If the men’s facility was brutal, the women’s was a nightmare. There, she said, systematic efforts to suppress reproduction were underway.
“They were all forcibly sterilized,” Sidiq recounted. “They were given unknown pills that stopped their periods. Even unmarried girls were subjected to sterilization.”
She remembers one teenager vividly. “She was 19 at most. They carried her out on a stretcher, and later she died. I think it was from all the pills. Her body just couldn’t take it.”
Sidiq herself was fitted with an intrauterine device, despite her age and deteriorating health. It caused heavy bleeding and constant pain. Eventually, authorities forced her into sterilization surgery. “I begged not to be taken for surgery,” she said. “I told them I couldn’t have children anymore. But I was still sterilized.”
Beijing’s Defense vs. Global Outrage
Beijing has repeatedly defended its Xinjiang policies as necessary to combat terrorism and religious extremism, describing the camps as schools to provide job skills. But rights groups, former detainees, and leaked internal Chinese documents tell a different story: mass internment, indoctrination, forced labor, torture, and sexual violence.
Several Western parliaments—including those of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada—have gone further, declaring China’s actions a genocide. The United Nations has accused Beijing of “serious human rights violations,” though it has stopped short of using the term. China flatly rejects these claims, dismissing testimonies like Sidiq’s as “fabrications.”
Escape to Europe
By 2019, Sidiq’s health had collapsed. With her daughter’s help, she managed to secure a passport—a rare feat for members of minority groups—and left for the Netherlands. She believes she was only able to leave because she is Uzbek, not Uyghur. “If I were Uyghur,” she said, “I would never have gotten out.”
Her husband, however, was not so fortunate. As an Uyghur, he was denied permission to travel abroad and later pressured into divorcing her. From exile, Sidiq has continued to speak publicly about the abuses, drawing the attention—and ire—of Beijing.
Chinese police have contacted her directly, threatening her family. “They told me, ‘Don’t do this. If you listen to us, we will help your husband get out of the country, or you can come back, and you will be together again,’” she recalled. Her response was firm: “Do whatever you want. I will not remain silent.”
A Testimony That Defies Silence
Today, living under asylum in the Netherlands, Sidiq continues to speak for those still trapped inside Xinjiang. Her testimony is part of a growing body of evidence that points to systemic repression of Muslim minorities in western China.
For many observers, her story embodies both the human cost of China’s Xinjiang policies and the resilience of those who have survived them. As governments worldwide debate how to respond, survivors like Sidiq insist that silence is complicity.
“I lost my job, my health, my husband, and my country,” she said. “But I will not lose my voice.”
Courtesy: RFE/RL
