Video: The Frightening Situation of the Uyghur people in Chinese concentration camps and their cry for help

EK: Dear brothers and sisters around the world, I am Ehmetjan Kashgari, extending to you a warm welcome for coming to watch our video presentation.

Today we will share with you a true story about the Uyghur people’s frightening situations in Chinese concentration camps — in fact, they should be called death camps.

With us on the screen now, our brother Mr. Omer Bekali, who will tell us his first-hand account of the terrible things that happened to him while being locked up in Chinese concentration camps for 8 months last year.

Assalamu Aleykum Brother,

OB: Waeleykum Asssalam

EK: God Bless you.

Today we are eagerly waiting for you to tell us what you saw and heard about the tragedies our relatives are experiencing back home in Eastern Turkistan.

To begin, please introduce yourself to us. We would appreciate that. Thank you

 OB:  OK. I am Omer Bekali, a citizen of Kazakhstan. I moved to Kazakhstan in 2006, but I was born in Eastern Turkistan’s Turpan district, Pichan county.

 EK: God Bless you.

As far as we know, you were the first person who, after moving to Kazakhstan from China, gave the first-hand account of your own experience in the Chinese concentration camps to foreign media. That left us with such an impression that we have been waiting anxiously to hear from your own mouth about what is going on in our homeland, Eastern Turkistan.

Okay, you left China in 2006. When did you first see these concentration camps ? When these atrocities started happening to Uyghurs, I wondered if you had thought that it might happen to you as well ?  We have been hearing all kinds of stories about the concentration camps. Today we would like to hear the true story from you. Please tell us your ordeal as detailed as possible.

We have been hearing that our parents and relatives had been locked up in concentration camps, but some of us are afraid to ask or even imagine the kind of terrible ordeals they are going through in there. If we hear the real story from you, it might help awaken something in our body and soul. It may help us see the possibility of things that we previously thought impossible. In other words, it may awaken the humanity in us all to act against the evil plan of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

OB: OK, from 2016 to 2017 I worked as a director in a big reputable tourism company in Kazakhstan, and I was in charge of bringing tourists from China into Kazakhstan. Since my parents were still in Eastern Turkistan, I used to get a 12 months visa every year, and had no difficulty in going back and forth between the two countries.

On March 22, 2017 I landed at the Urumqi airport for a work-related meeting in Urumqi city, and the next day I attended the meeting.  After the meeting, my director said “I can give you a one day break to go and see your parents since they live in a nearby county.”  So, I took off on March 25th towards my parents’ house in Pichan, and arrived there by 11pm. You might have heard about the many obstacles one has to go through to move around in Eastern Turkistan. I mean, there are police checkpoints for going from one village to another or from one city to the next, and these checkpoints are just like a customs checkpoint for entering a foreign country — they were that tight.

The next day around 10am, five armed policemen showed up at my parents’ doorstep and asked me to follow them to the police station. I politely refused. As a foreign citizen, we were supposed to register within 3 days when we were in Chinese territory, and I had done that already in Urumqi. I said “I only stay here for one day and I plan to leave China tonight by 1pm. Here is my ticket”. Ignoring what I said, right in front of my parents, they forcibly handcuffed me and took me away in the police car to the local police station.

At the police station they told me that Karamay police office sent out the detention notice. I asked what my crime had been, and they said “we don’t know, it was not written, it only says you are a suspicious person and that you had to be detained. That is why we are taking you into custody now.” I told them “I am a Kazakh citizen. Your detention notice shows my old Chinese personal ID, which was no longer valid. On top of that it did not mention my crime. If you have an arrest notice, show it to me, then I will call the Kazakh consulate.”  They said “you have no right to contact anybody” and then took away the belongings on my person — my passport, telephone, wallet and the cash — everything was confiscated.

After that they took me to the local hospital and conducted a thorough physical exam taking 2 hours, — withdrawing blood, DNA exam, checking out all of my internal organs. During this time, I was afraid that they were going to butcher me for my internal organs, because I had heard before that the Chinese are involved in live organ harvesting and selling of jailed people’s internal organs to other people

By 7pm the exam was over including a voice recording and fingerprint, and then they locked me up in a cell in Pichan county’s temporary detention center. I was held there for 8 days. During this time, I saw all the detainees were heavily shackled as if they were animals. For food, they were only provided watery rice, a bun, and vegetable soup. Young people were suffering from hunger.

8 days later, 3 policemen came from Karamay, 2 han and 1 Uyghur police, and said “we came to take you to Karamay.” “What was my crime, and why do you want to take  me to Karamay?” I asked. They said “we will talk about it when we get to Karamay.” Then, they said “Yes, when you were working in the travel agency, you might have illegally sent people to Europe, Turkey, and even to Syria. We had that suspicion. Because of that we are detaining you.” I said, “well, go ahead and find out”, thinking that if they investigate my tourism business it might take them 3 or 4 days or 6 to 10 days at the longest. I would had never thought that they would lock me up for 8 months.

On the evening we arrived at Karamay, a throng of reporters videoed and photographed me as if a big terrorist was captured by the police. The reporters displayed great pride in the accomplishment of their police force.Then, the policemen put me in an underground cell in the police station. Brothers, please remember, all the police stations in Eastern Turkistan has an underground torture cell for first time internees where they are beaten and tortured.

During the trip from Pichan to Karamay on the police car, they shackled my feet and put on hand cuffs, and one police stared at me all the way from Pichan to Karamay. They must have read my mind, because I thought about pulling the steering wheel of the car, killing all 3 police including myself for tormenting an innocent person like me. But I thought about my parents, my 3 children, and my wife, and thought that one live person is better than thousand martyrs. I must stay alive, so I did not act on my thought.

On that night they did not question me. But the next day, interrogation was started by the police chief, a Han. I don’t remember his name. He started by saying sarcastically “so you are a Kazakh citizen, a fake foreigner. If you are brave, ask your president Nazarbayev to come and take you home. Your country, Kazakhstan, equals this”. Here “this” represents a horrible expletive used by this Han policeman. My whole body was filled with tremendous anger, standing there like Rambo, I wanted to shout “if you can, shoot me and kill me”, but I didn’t say that. I told myself I should first understand why they detained me. And I stared at him but did not respond to him. Then, they started their threats by chaining me into a so-called “tiger chair,” a metal chair in which they clamped down my wrists and ankles. I couldn’t move at all. They questioned me for 4 days and nights without sleep. During the questioning, some detainees got beaten with wooden sticks, just as shown in that drawing.

According to them, my crime was: organizing terrorists, spreading terrorist ideas, and supporting terrorists. It was about a lady called Rushen. She was a Chinese citizen but applied for asylum in Kazakhstan. Because of that, they assigned these 3 crimes to me and tortured me. I still have scars on my legs and hands from that torture.

During the questioning on one night I heard the cry of a woman detainee.

After 4 days and nights of interrogation the police could not make me acknowledge any crime, and got no result,  so they asked me to sign the session notes for the questioning. Since there was no one available to write it in Kazakh language, it was written in Uyghur language. After reading it carefully, I signed it. Then they threw me into a prison.

Now if I talk about it, I cry again. In the prison cell, they chained my already-shackled feet to the posts of large concrete beds, like animals secured to a stationary post. I said to the guards, “I did not commit any crime and I am a foreigner, why do you do this to me?”  they said “whether you are a foreigner, a Kazakh or an Uyghur, you must taste this”. I felt so angry, and looked around at my cell mates, and the cell mates said “for the moment don’t say too much, stay quiet”. So, I calmed down. And I stayed chained like that for 3 months. During these 3 months, all the human activities happened in that cell, e.g. eating, drinking and using toilet –were all in one place.The guards told us to our face, “you are muslims, aren’t you?  let’s see how you do your ablution and how you pray”  Of course, with those shackles, you can’t do any washing, let alone taking off your clothes. I spent 3 months like that.

After 3 months, they adopted a new tactic that had been implemented in Kashgar and Aksu districts where they chained us like death-row inmates, or like Guantanamo prisoners, that is, they chained the foot shackle to the handcuff, the whole metal thing weighs about 12 lbs. (or 6 kg). And everybody must wear orange clothes. They did not care if the prisoner is an Uyghur, a Kazakh or a Hui. If you are a muslim, you had to be chained and shackled like that.

We prisoners understood that the government’s purpose of imprisoning us here like this was to crush our spirit, the indigenous people of this land, so that we cannot hold our head high and dare to speak for ourselves. However, regardless of what ethnic group they are, I could sense the rage and the militancy of our brothers there. I knew they could not voice their feelings, but I can speak for them to the Chinese, “you can chain our body, but you can never ever chain our spirit, God willing!”

I can affirmatively state that the prison’s real goal for us prisoners were to kill us by torture. I can say this because in the prison we had older people, young people, and sick people. The food was terrible, and there was no fresh air. The prison door opens only for two reasons: either if a prison er is taken out for interrogation or if a prisoner dies in the cell. Other times the cell door is locked and no fresh air is allowed inside.

I spent 7 months in the prison like that and during that time I knocked on the cell door and shouted many times, demanding that I wanted to speak to Kazakh consulate, my relatives, or wanted to hire a lawyer. The guards said “ok”, but never granted me my requests. If they ignore the requests of a foreigner, you can imagine that the locals there have no rights at all.

7 months and 10 days later, that was on Nov 4th, 2017, the guards brought a piece of paper to me, saying “you committed no crime, and you will be released from prison on parole.” I thought I would be free, and stepped out of the jail with a happy feeling. Initially, I could not walk on my feet like normal. I was walking like a very old and frail person, taking one baby step at a time. After 15 minutes of practicing walking, my feet finally got used to normal walking again.

I did not think that after the jail release they would take me to a concentration camp. To my surprise, they took me to a concentration camp. But the concentration camp guards refused to take me in, saying “he is a foreigner and he has high blood pressure.” Then, the guards who escorted me called the police chief on their phone. Since I understand mandarin well, I heard the police chief saying “throw him into the concentration camp, I will take care of the arrangements, you guys take him to the hospital and get him reexamined”. Then, the guards took me to the hospital, and doctors examined my blood pressure repeatedly, after 3 times of examination, the doctor produced a document stating that my blood pressure was normal. Then, they sent me to a concentration camp.

Everyone sent to the concentration camps was initially asked about his/her life story. Since they deliberately locked me up in the concentration camp, after passing the entrance door, except for saying that “I am a citizen of Kazakhstan”, I refused to answer all other questions.

The concentration camps is divided into 3 zones, A, B and C. The zone C has the toughest restrictions. Everyone who was released from prison gets transferred straight into the zone C. They first crush our spirit and weaken our body in the prison for 1 month to 7 months, then transfer us to Zone C. The food in the zone C is the same as in the prison.

Initially this was what happened in the concentration camp: all zone C internees dined together. But for the class instruction we were divided into a class size of 70 to 80 internees per classroom and taught to express a gratitude to the government. Before meals all of us were ordered to sing together, 1 to 3 red songs and also chant 3 wishes and 3 thanks: thank the party, thank Xi-the-pig, thank the motherland; and wish for good health and long life to Xi-the-pig, wish for the prosperity of the country, and wish for the solidarity of all ethnic groups.

For the flag raising ceremony, for a week after I entered there, they took us outside under the watchful eyes of 50 to 60 policemen. Half of them were heavily armed and the other half were holding 2 meter long wooden sticks along with their shields. They looked like a swat team responding to an urgent incident. For this event, initially, 1 to 1.5 thousand internees in the entire zone were taken in and out from their rooms in a single file. Later on, they must have been afraid that some kind of organized resistance could erupt, so they decided to keep us inside for this event: they played the national anthem music on the loudspeaker, and we were ordered to sing the text to the music while facing the empty walls inside. And this was called the flag raising ceremony.

We all used to dine together. For the same reason of a potential organized uprising, during dining they divided us into smaller groups, like 60 to 70 internees at a time, and took us to a hall to have meals. of course, we had to chant the 3 thanks and 3 wishes before the meal was served.

For the rest of the day, they brainwashed us: for example, they told us how bad religion is, fight the 3 forces (oppose extremism, separatism, and terrorism), learn to sing red songs, learn from the spirit and the behavior of the so-called model minority citizens who parroted the official lines — all this was just like the cultural revolution of the past — criticize this person and that person, what good or bad deed he did today, he went astray because he practiced religion etc. When nothing else was left to criticize, they asked someone to stand up and speak. Before going to bed they held a 2 hour long meeting every day.

They locked up all kinds of people in zone C, for example, lawyers, I know one famous Karamay lawyer, his name is Atawulla, teachers, for example a literature teacher called Tayir, doctors, intellectuals, successful business people, anyone who has any social influence, of course, the religious leaders were the 1st to be swept up into this place.

I noticed that before the October 1st national holiday, they used to bring people to the concentration camps only during the night; after this holiday, they started rounding up people day and night and brought them to the concentration camp. They did not care about the age, or the health of the person being captured.

Since I was a foreigner and they could not find any crime on me, they put me in a 3 square meter-size solitary confinement made up of heavy duty cloth walls, where you can not kill yourself, even if you wanted to, by banging your head against the walls.

EK: Did they seperate you from the rest of the internees?

OB: Yes. They put me in a solitary confinement. I realized that since they could not find any crime on me they would let me go. Sure enough, after a month later, they released me.

When I was in the camp I saw people wearing the same clothes they had on when they were captured, e.g., I felt like the entire refinery workers in the Karamay were locked up with their work uniforms, teachers were in their suites if they happened to have their suits on, some people in their sleeping clothes because the armed police showed up while they were sleeping.  The armed police captured people at any location, work place, or people’s bedroom while people were in sleep and put a black hood over their heard, so nobody knows who was taken and where these people were taken and if they are alive or dead. Communication with the outside was completely cutoff.

Only internees in zone A, where the people who had undergone ideological reforms and those who parrot the official lines, were allowed to see their outside families once a month, others in zone B and C were not allowed to see anyone outside. The sick people were not even allowed to seek medical treatment. I saw with my own eyes, for example, in the camp a man I recognized from Karamay, because I lived in Karamay before, his name is Setiwaldi. He told me that one of his kidneys was swollen due to the police beating and his illness had gotten so bad that he urinated blood. By the way, the internees were not allowed to speak in Uyghur language in the camp, one must speak in Chinese. Since I was a foreighner, they allowed me to speak in Uyghur or in Kazakh languages, in a quiet voice, of course. Setiwaldi told me that probably he could not make it alive to the outside, and asked me to prey for him. In fact, Setiwaldi himself was a folk medicine practitioner, and he told the guards that he could treat himself using his own medicine if the guards allow his medicine brought inside the camp. But the guards did not allow that either, let alone the government treating his illness. The official story, that the sick internees inside were medically treated, is false. Even if they gave us medicine for this or for that, but we were forced to take the medicine under their watchful eyes. So, you don’t know what you are taking.  In my case, I was given medication for my high blood pressure and asked to take the medicine in front of them, but I was afraid that they might poison me, so I put the tablets under my tongue, pretending I swallowed them when they examined my mouth. I did not take any of their medicines.

I saw a dead person being hauled off from the camp, but never heard or seen anybody leaving this place alive. After I left the camp, I saw all the restaurants in Karamay were closed down, and I could hardly see any male Uyghur or Kazak on the street in Karamay city.

If you believe me, in the jail you can hear stories that people outside the prison are not even aware of. For example, the government built a 10-thousand-person concentration camp near Karamay, they turned the city Uyghur middle school into a camp, two political education centers were tuned into camps, the city temporary detention center was also turned into a camp, that is where I was held.  While I was there I heard that the jail was so full, that those whose prison terms were completed, were not returned home, and were instead brought to the camps straight from their prison, were not even allowed an hour of interaction with their family.

EK: Did you have a chance in the camps to meet someone who was brought in from jails?

OB: Yes. I met a person called Ezizjan who was released from prison and also others, 4 or 5 of them. Because during my 8 months of being locked up, they changed my place 4 times in the prison in 7 months and 3 times in the concentration camp within a month.

EK: I wanted to ask a question — did the people who were transferred from prison tell you that the conditions in the jail is better than in the camps?

OB: Yes,  of course, that was what they (former prisoners) told me. They said that the condition in the jail was better than the condition in the camp. In the jail they were given enough food and after their mandatory labors were completed they were allowed to go outside on the court and breathe in fresh air.

OB: I’ll tell you another new story: A jail mate who is from Xiho (a county city in the Northern part of the province) told me that the government built a 30 thousand person jail on the open court and grasslands inside the existing jail he was locked up in Xiho. Way too many people from Kashgar and Hoten were brought into Xiho prison and the jails were overcrowded. Anyone who committed a petty crime was taken out of the jail and transferred to a concentration camp. He said that inside that jail, the detainees were not even allowed to scratch themselves if there is an itch on the face or the neck, for example, the detainees have to verbally report, for example,  “Report Officer, may I scratch myself on this place or that place? or may I turn my head this way or that way?”.  This was because, in order to prevent the detainees from silently praying, the guards force all the detainees to raise both of their hands to cover the back of their heads, just like this, and kept them that way for 8 to 10 hours a day.

In the jail,  to wash your head, they give you one minute, if you cannot finish washing in 1 minute under the watchful eyes of 3 Han guards, they beat you with long wooden sticks.

What is apparent here is, the CCP’s goal is try to crush our spirit, because we are the owners of this land and the resources in it. They wanted to eradicate us completely. Every Uyghur and Kazakh who is locked up, either in a camp or in a jail, understands this point. My brothers, they are united in spirit.

EK: Brother, was there any Uyghur or Kazakh people among those who interrogated you?

OB: Yes, 1 Uyghur, 1 Kazakh, and one Han, 3 people interrogated me. These Uyghur and Kazakhs were trained by the government like robots. I can’t say anything more about them.

As if the physical torture in the jail was not enough, the psychological torment in the concentration camp was overwhelming… one can tolerate the physical torture, but the spiritual torment is difficult to bear.

The government’s only goal is to torture us physically and torment us spiritually in such a way that if we resist and rise up, then they can justify killing us all.  I believe they built these concentration camps for that purpose. Because as I mentioned before, during my stay in the jails and concentration camps, when I refused to answer their questions, they tortured me in 3 different ways. First, they starved me for 24hrs. 2nd, solitary confinement with shackles and handcuffs, 3rd chaining me to the so-called tiger chair. For others who disobeyed the rules or refused to answer questions during the interrogation, severe physical beating happened before these 3 measures are taken.

According to other brothers in the camp, those who are uncooperative were thrown into a water tank for 24hrs.  Those who disobey the rule further were forced to stay on ice naked during the winter for a day at a time, and during the summer stand on concrete floor outside under the sun barefoot and only in their underwear.

I understood that the goal of the CCP is either to kill these Uyghur and Kazakh people or turn us into useless human beings if our brothers and sisters in captivity were ever allowed to go free. You might have heard the story that our girls, once released, would have no normal periods and adult males released would have no more desire for the opposite sex. According to a personal story of a political prisoner, among those released from prison, both males and females are turned infertile before coming out from prison.  On top of these inhumane treatments, raping of  prisoners has become a common occurance in the prison. How do I know it?

When I was locked up in a solitary confinement in the prison, women’s cells were nearby and I could hear women’s loud cry and shouting, like “shoot me, kill me”. Haay, no possibility to fight back in there !!!

After I went back to Kazakhstan, I thought I was the only one who experienced this. I had already known the oppression of Uyghur people in the concentration camps. Because my mother is an Uyghur, and I had relatives from my mother’s side, one of them is called Ismail, who had been imprisoned for political reasons. Although I have heard about it, since I had not seen it with my own eyes, to tell you the truth, I had never thought that the Han people had become this cruel and this fascist.

In the course of normal life in Eastern Turkistan, with these Han people around us in the workplace and on the streets, we can only see their outer appearances, but we cannot see the cruel and dehumanizing oppressions committed by these Hans during the night and behind closed doors. When I tell these stories, many people don’t believe me, saying “how in the world could modern society allow these sort of things to happen?”

For example, when I told this story to the Associated Press journalists from America in May, 2018, the journalists were surprised and said “this is not possible, since you are a foreigner, how in the world could they have tortured you like this for 8 months? We would like to corroborate your story by finding another person released from the camps.” So, they interviewed Khayrat Samarkand, another former internee. After this, they believed my story and published it on May 17, 2018.

Now the whole world has heard about it — Omer Bekali was the person who came out of the camp and saw what the Chinese government has been denying all along, the camps that were set up to destroy the very identity of these ethnic people exist in reality!

Another thing I have to mention is, May 17th was the day when American trade representatives from the US Commerce Dept had arrived at Beijing. My guess is the American side wanted to use the concentration camp issue as one of the negotiating tools, that might be why the AP news broke on the same date.

After this, I had 15 to 20 days of medical treatment in Kazakhstan. On Dec 28, 2017, I gave an interview to Radio Free Asia, telling them how, us Kazakhs with an independent country, were being oppressed by the Chinese. I can’t imagine the oppressions and cruelty my Uyghur brothers and sisters are enduring now in the camps. They have no one to help except for God. I hope God will protect them.

Now, my brothers, if you can feel it, the knife has cut off the hand already. But my Uyghur brothers outside Eastern Turkistan, whether they are in Kazakhstan or in Turkey, they have not realized the gravity of this situation yet.  Because, many Uyghur brothers in Kazakhstan think we Kazakhs are sheep-herdsmen from the mountain.  When in fact, we have many Kazakh intellectuals and well-educated politicians. With their advice and help, we learned how to use the media to protect ourselves, how to claim our relatives in the camps, and how to free ourselves.

For example, in my case, my wife sent letters to the Kazakh foreign ministry and UN human rights council and posted videos; my mother and sister in Urumqi visited the local Kazakh consulate; through all these efforts, first with God’s help, second, with the direct involvement of the Kazakh foreign ministry I was freed.

My advice to you brothers, if you can lay claim to this land, if the blood flowing in your vein is the Uyghur and Kazakh Turks’ blood, and if you have a conscience and have faith in your heart, you should claim your relatives,  parents and sisters and brothers. If you ignore them, they will be annihilated, thus fulfilling the purpose of the concentration camps — total destruction of our people.

We have now 13 Kazakh brothers, including me, who have been released from the concentration camps. 12 of them are now in Kazakhstan. There are all kinds of forces, including writers who are sold out to the Chinese, and other sold-out political forces of various stripes that are trying their best in every way to stop these former internees from exposing what they saw in the camps.

Before May 17th, I also received telephone threats 3 times. After my AP interview was published, two spy agents who are sold out to the Chinese came to my house, saying “your house has a terrorist”, “your neighbor complained to us, stating that terrorists in Omer Bekali’s house are planning something”.

I realized that the very close relationships between Kazakhstan and China might put my life in jeopardy, therefore I immediately left Kazakhstan for Turkey.

My brothers, we have to learn how to use the media to speak up. If not, in the not too distant future you will not be able to find the graves of your parents, brothers, sisters or relatives. They will all be burnt up by the CCP.

I am forgetting many things, but I have to talk about food poisoning in the camps. I saw people suffering from diarrhea, and some people became unconscious. Even I lost consciousness once.  There is no meat in the food, but the food has a some strange taste in it. If someone falls unconscious from food poisoning, nobody cares about him or her.

Now if you understand it, the goal of the concentration camps is to poison your body using food and drink, to deprive you of fresh air, and so that under this kind of circumstances, one can get ill easily, and if someone develops a skin disease or other internal disease, they write you up with a diagnosis of contagious disease, and that person is condemned to cremation — burnt up into smoke, my brothers!

Now think about it, where can we find this person later on if he disappears like that?

By now, you must have heard about the deaths of famous people in the camp. You heard this news because they were well known. What about the average person? Nobody knows what is happening to the average person, if he or she is alive or dead. Since nobody is looking for them, this is a very good opportunity for the CCP to make disappear the average person, don’t you think?

Under such serious situations where our people’s lives are in imminent peril, some of my Uyghur and Kazakh brothers are staying silent, and living their daily life as if nothing is happening to our relatives back home. I find this shameful!

In Kazakhstan close to 5 thousand Kazakh citizens declared that they have relatives in China, some are inside the camps and other are outside the camps. At this stage of  the world, forcibly dividing one family into two, separating children from parents, and cutting off communication among family members are  inhumane behavior on the part of Chinese government.

While the Chinese gov are trying to hide the true nature of their atrocious policy against our relatives, we Turkic people, Uyghur and Kazakhs, should unite and declare to the Chinese gov that those people in Eastern Turkistan are our parents, our brothers, our sisters and relatives, and demand their release from the camps, demand that they stop the oppression. It pains me to see those among us who don’t dare say anything or do anything about it, while claiming themselves as Uyghur or Kazakh.

My serious advice to you brothers: you have been hearing about the oppressions towards our brothers and sisters, for example, the government is forcing our old widows, with one-leg-in-the-grave already, to marry Hans, as you all know now, they have already forced our young girls to marry Han boys. Now I want you to wake up!  Don’t fall asleep, otherwise you cannot face your creator! We all die one day, how are you going answer your creator?

I believe because of what I have been doing, I can face my parents, my Kazakh people and Uyghur people in the eye, and in front of our creator I can answer his questions when I die, God willing.

Until the concentration camps are closed, my life is not a life. My position is clear, to my last breath I will not stop exposing the Chinese government’s fascist behavior until my Uyghur and Kazakh people are freed from oppressions. My brothers and sisters, I implore you, please don’t stop speaking up, if you continue to stay silent, you will be too late to save your relatives back home. If what is flowing in your vein is the blood of an Uyghur or a Kazakh, lay claim to your people.

In this life I have no greater desire than to bear witness in front of the whole world at a UN meeting that I am the person who tasted the Chinese governments’ brutal oppression inside the camps, and the camps exist in reality today.

Ehmetjan, that is all I can say now, please ask me questions if you have any.

EK: God bless you. Thank you very much, brother.

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A gentle reminder to those who understand the Uyghur version of the original interview:

since the content of the question-answer sessions was already covered by Mr.Bekali’s detailed statements prior to it, the Q&A part is not translated. If you think, the current translation needs corrections or additions or further refinements, please feel free to improve upon it.

Thanks.

A Volunteer.