Qelbinur Sidik, who was coerced to teach Mandarin at two of China’s Uighur ‘re-education’ camps, has described what she witnessed there as well as her own forced sterilisation at the age of 50.
As part of a government campaign to suppress the birth rates of women from Muslim minorities, Sidik says women between the ages of 18 and 59 were told they must have intrauterine devices (IUDs) fitted or undergo sterilisation.
Sidik worked as a teacher in two camps where she says she saw starvation rations and unsanitary and humiliating conditions, including limited access to bathrooms and water. She also heard the screams of tortured prisoners and witnessed at least one inmate being carried out dead.
In the second centre where she worked, which held mostly young women, a trusted colleague told her that rape of inmates by Chinese guards was routine
