'The Only Crime of Most of Us Was That We Were Uyghur Muslims': Concentration camp survivor Tursunay Ziyawudun on her imprisonment and torture in China.

• Author: Childress, Billy

BEFORE SHE FLED, Tursunay Ziyawudun was one of about 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslims imprisoned in western China in what the government insists are "re-education" centers. She describes them as "worse than prison"--modern concentration camps.

Ziyawudun was born in what the Chinese government calls the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, though she calls it East Turkestan. About a decade ago, she married a Kazakh man and moved to Kazakhstan. When they returned to her home village at the end of 2016, she says, the situation had "completely changed."

Xinjiang, a region the size of Alaska, is home to 23 million people, 45 percent of whom are Uyghurs. The remainder are mostly Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group of mainland China. Today, Xinjiang is a police state where the government subjects the population to round-the-clock surveillance. Expressions of traditional Uyghur culture have been criminalized, and the threat of the concentration camp looms over every interaction.

In April 2017, Chinese police arrested Ziyawudun and held her for a month. They released her only because she was ill. Since the police had seized her passport, she couldn't return to Kazakhstan, though her husband eventually did. In March 2018, she was arrested again and imprisoned for nine months, during which time she was sexually tortured and witnessed unspeakable horrors.

Ziyawudun was lucky to make it out of China alive with the help of humanitarian groups--she declined to be more specific, for fear that the path she took will be closed to others--and she still has medical issues stemming from her treatment while imprisoned. She currently lives in the United States under the auspices of the Uyghur Human Rights Project. In September, Ziyawudun spoke about her experiences, often through tears, with Reason's Noor Greene in Washington, D.C.

A caution to readers: This interview describes Ziyawudun's experience in the camps in graphic terms.

Reason: Before you left with your husband for Kazakhstan, what was life like?

Ziyawudun: Before I got married to my husband, I lived with my family. My father passed away when I was 14 years old. However, I had my mom and other siblings, and I had other relatives as well, all scattered around Kunas County. I had a kind of normal life. I had my own clothes-sewing shop. After I got married to my husband, I had to go with him to Kazakhstan. Otherwise, I did not have any intention to travel overseas.

Even before I went to Kazakhstan with my husband, we knew. Not just in my family. All of us were living under pressure in my country, in my county, everywhere. It was inescapable. We still lived there, because that was our homeland, even though we were under pressure. Since that kind of condition already existed in my country, after I got married to my husband--he was already a Kazakhstan resident--I left.

How was your life different from that of other ethnic groups in China--for example, from Chinese people who are Han? Were there things that you were not allowed to do that they could do? Or did you feel like you were under more pressure than other ethnic groups within China?

Certainly there are differences of treatment. I mean, definitely, we live different lives compared to the Han Chinese. Not only just myself. I grew up witnessing those differences.

In my village, there was a time they asked us to move from where we lived. They said they were going to do development projects, and they pushed all Uyghur residents to move out from that area. But when we moved out, they simply confiscated our properties and land, giving us very little money, almost nothing.

Exactly the same situation happened to other Chinese residents in the area as well. But for the Chinese residents, they were given really good incentives and rewards. For example, one Han family was offered two houses, good opportunities for their whole family, everything. But we did not get that kind of treatment like the Han Chinese did.

Because so many Uyghurs lost their land and their...