![\"Coda](\"https:\/\/www.utjd.org\/uyghurtribunal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Screenshot-2021-06-16-at-12.38.59-300x151.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Testimony given at a London tribunal details the tracking, detention and abuse of ethnic minorities in northwest China<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A former police officer testified on Monday at the Uyghur Tribunal, an independent inquiry held in London to investigate China\u2019s alleged genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. He described how Uyghur Muslims were tortured and treated as \u201cless than human\u201d in the northwestern region\u2019s detention centers and prisons.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wang Leizhan \u2014 who spoke under a pseudonym via a video link, with his face covered and voice distorted \u2014 said he was one of up to 150,000 police recruits who were sent to the territory to \u201cdeal with\u201d the Uyghurs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wang spent several months in the region in 2018, tasked with investigating political and religious suspects, including Islamist groups. He recalled that on arrival he was immediately dispatched on arrest rounds. He added that during his short time in Xinjiang 300,000 Uyghurs were detained, including entire villages.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He stated that he did not know about the existence of so-called \u201cre-education\u201d or \u201cideology transformation\u201d camps until he arrived. Later, he learned of a special committee that ruled which Uyghurs would be forcibly detained. According to Wang, arrests were made because people \u201cwere showing their cultural identity, or they were somehow considered to have a different ideology\u201d to that of the Communist Party of China.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wang outlined how all Uyghur residents of Xinjiang had to provide DNA samples and that officers ordered schools and neighborhood committees to give up the names of people believed to have \u201cproblems with their thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After an individual\u2019s name was provided to the authorities, Wang explained that \u201call their activities, including using the telephone and using the internet\u201d were monitored, and that ID cards were used to flag Uyghurs trying to leave the region at train stations and airports. \u201cIf you\u2019re a suspect, someone who has this tendency \u2014 that you\u2019re against the government \u2014 that will be shown on the system,\u201d he said via an interpreter. \u201cEvery movement is all completely under surveillance control.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Among police ranks, Uyghurs were seen and described as \u201cenemies of the people,\u201d \u201cterrorists\u201d and \u201cseparatists,\u201d and \u201cwere not considered as human beings,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The tribunal heard allegations that guards tortured prisoners, suffocating them with plastic bags, forcing water into their lungs and electrocuting them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThey were forced to sign confessions to admit that they are terrorists and also to denounce and provide a list of their relatives and friends as being terrorists,\u201d Wang said in his witness statement.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI realized it was a kind of unwritten rule that the police have the power to torture prisoners,\u201d he told the panel, explaining that while officers were required to video interrogations of Han Chinese inmates, there was no such obligation for Uyghur prisoners.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Officers themselves were sworn to silence. \u201cEverything conducted was secretive. We were not supposed to disclose any information,\u201d he said. \u201cMany Uyghur police were arrested when they spoke about these facilities over the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wang left China in 2020 and is now living in Germany. \u201cMy dream was to serve my country and protect people,\u201d he said. \u201cGradually, from my own experiences with how the system works, I realized that I wasn\u2019t serving the people, I was serving the empire, to protect their power.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the tribunal\u2019s final day, the panel heard eight statements from witnesses including Mehmut Tevekk\u00fcl, 51, a Uyghur who was imprisoned and tortured in Xinjiang before being released in 2010, and Nursiman Abdureshid, 33, a Uyghur woman whose family is detained in Xinjiang\u2019s prisons. Proceedings concluded with new research from Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China Studies of the U.S.-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He told the panel about his peer-reviewed analysis of birth rates in Xinjiang, looking at how China is \u201coptimizing\u201d its ethnic population structure in the region. Ethnic minority birth quotas have been strictly imposed in Xinjiang since 2017. China has been accused of enforcing birth control and sterilization procedures, separating couples and detaining those who exceed their quota.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Zenz set out how birth control policies could stop between 2.6 and 4.5 million births of minorities in southern Xinjiang alone over the next two decades. He went on to state his belief that a shrinking population \u201cis easier to assimilate and indoctrinate.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The tribunal has no state backing and any judgement it reaches will not be binding. Beijing has also roundly attacked the proceedings. At a press conference in May, foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian described it as \u201ca special machine producing lies.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chaired by human rights barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice, the tribunal was held at the request of the World Uyghur Congress \u2014 an international organization of exiled Uyghurs \u2014 amid increasing pressure for western countries to investigate whether China\u2019s policies in Xinjiang amount to genocide. The panel and its witnesses will reconvene in September.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Watch: the story of another police officer in Xinjiang, as recounted by his sister:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n