![](\"https:\/\/docs.uhrp.org\/images\/Sayragul-Sauytbay.jpg\")
Sayragul Sauytbay, accused of illegally crossing the Chinese border to join her family in Kazakhstan, said she was forced to work in what China called \u201ca political camp\u201d but was \u201ca prison in the mountains\u201d. Photo: AFP<\/em><\/p>\n
China\u2019s predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups are believed to make up the majority of the camps\u2019 populations.<\/p>\n
Chinese authorities have denied the existence of such facilities despite mounting evidence from both official documents and testimonies by those who have escaped them.<\/p>\n
Asked under oath about a so-called \u201ccamp\u201d where she worked as an employee of the Chinese state, court spectators gasped when Sauytbay replied that it held about 2,500 ethnic Kazakhs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn China they call it a political camp but really it was a prison in the mountains,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Inside the camps where China tries to brainwash Muslims until they love the party and hate their own culture<\/a><\/p>\n Sauytbay said authorities had told her she would never be allowed to enter Kazakhstan, where her family had obtained citizenship.<\/p>\n \u201cThat I am discussing this camp in an open court means I am already revealing state secrets,\u201d said Sauytbay, who asked Kazakhstan not to send her back to China.<\/p>\n Sauytbay is one of many ethnic Kazakhs separated from relatives over the border after a crackdown in Xinjiang, where authorities cite separatist and extremist threats as justification for repressive policies.<\/p>\n There are about 1.5 million ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n They had avoided the extreme state repression suffered by Uygurs, another mostly Muslim Turkic group that forms a demographic majority in many parts of the region.<\/p>\n How questioning China\u2019s security crackdown in Xinjiang led to a 20-year jail term<\/a><\/p>\n Unlike Uygurs, ethnic Kazakhs had long moved freely between China and their historic homeland.<\/p>\n About 200,000 of them became Kazakh citizens since the central Asian country\u2019s independence in 1991.<\/p>\n That freedom disappeared, however, after a Chinese official known for his aggressive surveillance and population control measures in Tibet took charge of the nominally autonomous region in 2016, overseeing mass detentions and programmes of re-education for Muslims.<\/p>\n In late 2016, authorities took the unprecedented step of calling in Muslim minorities\u2019 passports, forcing anyone needing to leave the country to file official requests.<\/p>\n Sauytbay\u2019s husband Wali Islam testified that for several months the family lost contact with her after she was reassigned to a re-education centre. Sauytbay told the court she had been tricked into working at the camps by authorities.<\/p>\n The family was reunited only after Sauytbay crossed the border this April. Kazakh security services arrested her on May 21.<\/p>\n Xinjiang crackdown must go on to subdue \u2018terror risks\u2019, China says<\/a><\/p>\n Sauytbay\u2019s lawyer Abzal Kuspanov said the testimony of his client \u2013 who briefly consoled her 13-year-old daughter as she was ushered into the dock by police \u2013 was a sufficient indicator of what will await her if she returns to China.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not saying that she has not committed a crime by violating state borders using false documents,\u201d Kuspanov told Agence France-Presse on Friday. \u201cWe have admitted that to the court and we are prepared to accept punishment.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we are saying is, don\u2019t give her back to China. If we do send her back, this person will simply disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n The situation of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang is embarrassing for Kazakhstan, which is China\u2019s leading economic partner in central Asia.<\/p>\n Although its government is hesitant to confront Beijing, it is under growing pressure to speak out against the repression.<\/p>\n China has enlisted oil-rich Kazakhstan as a partner in its trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at improving overland trade routes between Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n So far Beijing has kept silent on the allegations. Two Chinese diplomats present at the hearing refused to answer questions from activists and journalists.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/docs.uhrp.org\/images\/burning-chinese-flag-istanbul.jpg\")
A Chinese flag is burned on July 5 in front of the Chinese consulate in Istanbul, during a protest about China\u2019s treatment of ethnic Uygur Muslims during a deadly 2009 riot in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Photo: AFP<\/em><\/p>\n