In the Camps by Darren Byler

Author:Darren Byler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Machine of Dehumanization

The first thing Adilbek noticed in what he called the “prison cell” where he spent his first six months of detention was that “the door was so thick.” It had a hole in it where the guards passed food to the two detainees who had been assigned to be “class monitors.” There were nine bunk beds in the cement room and a squat toilet at one end. There were two cameras, and near the one at the front of the room was a speaker and audio recording system. They did not turn the lights off at night.

When he arrived in the cell, the camp workers undid his handcuffs and told him that he was assigned to a top bunk. But they told him that during the day he was not allowed to sit or lie on the bed. Instead he had to sit straight up. At this point in the interview, Adilbek demonstrated what this ramrod straight posture looked like, his chest out and his head held high. “Until they brought us stools, we had to sit on the bottom bunk just like this for hours at a time, staring at the wall or the TV that was on the wall. You could not move whenever you wanted. You had to get permission.” As in Vera’s camp thirty kilometers to the east, the detainees were forced by the automated surveillance system and the guards who monitored it to sit absolutely still for most hours of the day—a form of physical torment that prevented them from relaxing and over time began to wreak havoc on their bodies. “They sat between these beds on plastic stools, reciting the rules. You had to recite, whether you knew Chinese or not. And because the people had to sit there for such long hours, there were many people whose intestines ‘fell down.’” Baimurat recalled, regarding the Qitai camp where many detainees suffered from rectal prolapses. “When they had such problems, they were finally allowed to see a doctor.” Continuing, he described how detainees would be hooded, shackled, and escorted by police armed with automatic weapons to the hospital in a manner identical to Vera’s experience.

Another former detainee named Payzilet who was held in the women’s quarters of the same camps as Adilbek recalled that these digestive problems were complicated by the lack of hydration they received and the lack of nutrition and fiber in their rations. “Frequently it happened that we couldn’t go to the toilet during our allotted time,” she noted. “This is because we often only drank one or two bowls of thin soup and ate one or two steamed buns without tea each day. It is hard to go to the toilet quickly if you hardly drink anything.”

Every former detainee I spoke with said that sleeping at night was difficult. Adilbek recalled, “There were twenty-three or twenty-four people in our cell, so some of us had to sleep together in the bunk.” They had to sleep head to feet on their sides.

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