“Because you had to do it very quickly, or you could be punished.”
The following is a summary of the interview with Xinjiang camp eyewitness Tursunay Ziyawudun, done at the office of the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights organization on October 15, 2019. The summary and English translation were done by Kaster Bakyt. Gene A. Bunin did the English editing. After falling ill, Tursunay went back to China in 2016 for a gall bladder operation. The Kazakh government wasn’t allowing her to stay in Kazakhstan any longer, as she was there on a visitor’s visa and hadn’t been able to get either a residence permit or Kazakhstan citizenship (as she was Uyghur and her husband, though ethnically Kazakh, wasn’t a Kazakhstan citizen yet). She had lived in Kazakhstan for a total of 5 years. Upon their arrival in China, both she and her husband had their passports taken by the local authorities. She was later sent to a “school” for a month. Four months later, her husband got his passport back, with Tursunay being his “guarantor” so that he could go back to Kazakhstan. She was taken to a …
