Sayragul taught in Chinese camps for Muslim minorities

The camps are part of China's state-run campaign against the Muslim minority cults in Xinjiang. The repression against Uighurs, Kazakhs and Hui continues both inside and outside the camps.

In the camp where Sayragul Sauytbay was a teacher, they received lessons in Chinese, Chinese culture, slogans, Communist Party songs and politics. Often under repetitive forms.

“I'm Chinese. I'm proud of China, "they were forced to repeat a thousand, two thousand, three thousand times, says Sayragul Sauytbay.

The camps, spread across northwest China, are, according to China, a kind of training center, for everything from job training to the rehabilitation of terrorists.

According to the UN, one million people are interned in camps all over Xinjiang. But testimony from the camps is unusual.

In November 2017, Sayragul Sayutbay arrived at a camp in Zhaosu town in the Ili region of Xinjiang. Her job in the camp was to teach the Kazakh prisoners in Chinese. That she was forced to be a teacher in a camp was also a kind of punishment.

Sayragul Sauytbay says she could see traces of the torture on her students.

- Cut off nails. Bruises on the body. Teeth that have been pulled out, she says.

The family's problems began when the son, then five-year-old Wulagat, came home from school and refused to speak Kazakh because he was scared.

The teacher had taped his mouth to school again after he accidentally spoke Kazakh there. Then the family decided that Sayragul's husband Wali would move with the children to Kazakhstan.

But because Sayragul's employer had confiscated her passport, she was unable to attend. Chinese authorities had also forced her to report her phone number, and all contact between her and the rest of the family was turned off.

For two and a half years she had no contact with her husband or children.

After the family moved, the pressure against Sayragul became increasingly fierce, and eventually she was forced to work as a teacher in a camp, for just over four months.

After that, she decided to make the risky escape to Kazakhstan. There the family could be reunited, and later received a residence permit in Sweden.