Igor students: Egypt arrested us and Chinese officers interrogated us

Abdelmalek Abdel Aziz, one of the Uighur students in Egypt, was surprised during his arrest at the Egyptian police by being questioned - blindfolded and handcuffed - by Chinese officials.

Abdel Aziz was arrested in broad daylight with a group of his friends and taken to a police station in Cairo where Chinese officials asked him what he was doing in Egypt.

The three officials spoke to the student in Chinese and addressed him by his Chinese name, not Uyghur.

Abdel Aziz, 27, told AFP details of an incident in Egypt in 2017 in which more than 90 Uighur students, a Muslim minority living in northwest China's Xinjiang Province, were arrested. They are exactly. "

The campaign lasted three days in the first week of July 2017, according to non-governmental organizations.Abdulaziz was a student studying Islamic sciences at Al-Azhar University.

Abdel Aziz said the Egyptian police "told us that the Chinese government says you are terrorists, but we answered that we are students only in Al-Azhar."

Economic cooperation
China, one of Egypt's biggest foreign investors, is pouring money into mega-infrastructure projects such as a new administrative capital east of Cairo. Trade between the two countries hit a record $ 13.8 billion last year.

Three weeks before the Egyptian security crackdown, Egypt and China signed a security memorandum focusing on "combating terrorism."

After a few days of interrogation at the police station in Nasr City, one of Cairo's affluent neighborhoods, Abdel Aziz was sent to Tora Prison, one of Egypt's most famous prisons.

He was released after 60 days in detention and fled to Turkey in October 2017.

The Egyptian interior ministry and the Egyptian embassy in Cairo did not respond to AFP questions.

Asked about the deportation of Uighurs in 2017, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Hafez said: "Offenders, including nationals of the People's Republic of China, are deported among many other nationalities.

Cruel journey
Shamsuddin Ahmed, 26, another Uighur student, tells the details of his arrest on July 4, 2017 outside the Musa ibn Nusayr mosque in the Nasr City district. I still don't know if he's dead or alive. "

Many Uighurs, including those spoken to by AFP, refer to Xinjiang as "East Turkistan".

According to Ahmed, black carts with no license plates stopped in front of the mosque after the end of Asr prayer, and about five policemen arrested several Uighur worshipers.

Ahmed was also transferred to Tora, a prison complex that houses several prominent political prisoners in Egypt.

"I was scared when I got there, it was dark, and I told myself how we would get out of here, and I was afraid to hand us over to the Chinese authorities," he said.

`` Inside the prison, the Uighur prisoners were divided into two large groups, each containing 45-50 people, and then transferred to large cells for weeks.

Interrogate and divide
Two weeks before their release, Uighurs and other Chinese Muslims of different ethnic origin were divided into three groups, and each group was given a certain color: red for those to be deported to China, green for those to be released, and finally yellow for those to be asked further questions.

Ahmed said prison guards handcuffed and blindfolded the prisoners and then transferred several members of the group to trucks bound for Cairo police stations.

He said that during 11 days in police custody, three Chinese officials questioned him specifically about his father. Among the questions asked were where he is and how he sends you money?

Ahmed was in the green group, which means he will eventually be released, and in early October 2017 he fled to Istanbul.

Abdul Wali Ayoub, a professor of linguistics based in Norway, said he had heard similar accounts from other detainees.

"It's the practice and tactic applied in concentration camps in China, and I don't think it's a coincidence," said Ayoub, who has done research on the Uighur community in Egypt.

Ayoub explained the devastating impact of the 2017 campaign, which has reduced the size of a thriving society.It was made up of fifty families from about 6,000 people.

"For Uighurs, it is a nightmare for your Muslim brother to allow Chinese officials to interrogate you," he said. "They have lost their faith and are afraid to live abroad."

Systematic policy
According to human rights organizations, more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are held in a network of concentration camps in China where they are undergoing political rehabilitation.

Beijing says the "education center" camps are necessary to counter religious extremism.

An anthropologist at the University of Washington, Darren Bayler, said similar attempts were made by Chinese officials in Thailand and elsewhere to extradite Igor.

"But the autonomy allowed to the Chinese authorities in Egypt is unprecedented," he told AFP.

Abdel Aziz considers himself lucky to have found a chance to survive, but the fate of the other Uighurs expelled by Egypt is preoccupied. "Years have passed since we heard anything about those deported and our families.