Wang Leizhan

Last updated Jan 1, 2023

• Source

English Witness Statement

Male

I trained at a military police academy in mainland China. I have worked as a policeman for over 10 years. My job was mainly related to maintaining social order and national security. I also worked on investigating political and religious suspects, including Falun Gong and Islamist groups. In 2018, I was posted to Xinjiang. I left China in 2020 and currently live in Germany.

1. I was posted from mainland China to Xinjiang in 2018 and only stayed for some months. My main duties related to investigating anti-separatist movements. When I arrived in Xinjiang, I stayed in a police hotel – a residential area reserved for policemen coming from the other provinces. This was the first time I learnt about re-education (or “ideology transformation”) camps, from a senior colleague based in the area. I learnt from other policemen that these reeducation camps were aimed for people with different ideologies in order to make them more “politically correct.” I also learnt that the largest group locked in these re-education camps were Uyghurs. These re-education have nothing to do with education or training, but they are about brainwashing the prisoners.
2. I later learnt from several other policeman about the existence of a Committee, organised by local authorities, who decided on who was sent to the camps. This Committee decided which persons would be sent to the re-education camps. One possible accusation was that a person was a “Two Faced”. This accusation was normally used for those who had a higher status in society. The decisions on whom to accuse and arrest were made behind closed doors. This was an administrative Committee run by the local authorities. There was no juridical process or fair trial safeguards involved in these decisions. This Committee was also responsible for the overall surveillance and monitoring of citizens and could decide on arrest and detention of individuals. Moreover, all Uyghurs residents in Xinjiang had to provide the Chinese government DNA samples, to enable continual monitoring of Uyghurs.
3. In my discussions with other police officers, I learnt that as many as 150,000 police recruits were sent to Xinjiang in the period when I was there. On their arrival in Xinjiang, these recruits had to attend political training on how to deal with the Uyghurs. Many of these guards did not receive extensive professional police training. Many of these individuals were unemployed before they got recruited as police guards. The Chinese government initiated a recruitment drive for individuals from mainland China who were ready to move to Xinjiang to work as police guards. Many of these individuals were used to man the many check posts that were created in Xinjiang. There were checkpoints at every 500 metres in the city but in the suburbs of Ürümqi, these checkpoints were at every 200 metres. These police guards were also used to enforce censorship laws and arrest people.
4. This recruitment drive was part of the Chinese government’s policy of “Building Xinjiang.” And this has enabled the Chinese government to recruit several individuals from other parts of China, to send to Xinjiang, facilitated by “Xinjiang Aid” offices in the various provinces. The Xinjiang Aid offices helped with the recruitment of various professionals such as doctors, teachers, police and military. However, as the environment in Xinjiang was restrictive (eg. strict curfews, frequent identity checks even for Han Chinese), many individuals, including police officers posted in Xinjiang, did not wish to stay there for long. As an incentive, the Chinese government has offered very high salaries to police and military officers posted in Xinjiang to work. There is also a military internship, where especially young Han individuals from mainland China may join the military internship opportunities in Xinjiang, which are very well paid. In some cases, those Han individuals who agreed to move to Xinjiang got land for free (land which was previously confiscated from Uyghurs).
5. When these 150,000 police guards arrived and began to work in Xinjiang, they were immediately sent out on arrest rounds. When I arrived and I went on my round, we arrested around 300,000 Uyghurs. The reason for these arrests included that they might have had a knife at home or because they were showing their cultural identity, or they were somehow considered to have a different ideology. In some villages in Xinjiang, the whole population of a village was taken to the concentration camps.
6. In my previous experience working in mainland China, before I came to Xinjiang, I saw first-hand that Uyghur suspects were treated differently and harsher from other suspects. There was a national Chinese policy to arrest Uyghurs because they are automatically considered enemies/terrorists by this national policy. For instance, Uyghurs were not allowed to travel outside China and if we caught Uyghurs trying to travel abroad, we had to arrest them. Also, Uyghurs prisoners are monitored more closely in prisons. And prison guards are not allowed to provide them with any food or drink, as they had to be treated as terrorists according to prison rules. And Uyghur prisoners were also routinely tortured, using various methods. Very often, I noticed that the criminal charges against Uyghurs were just pretexts for arrest – for instance, because they sent / received money internationally.
7. I have witnessed Uyghurs being tortured. I feel compelled to speak about it because I am a professionally-trained policeman and what I have witnessed fell well below professional policing standards. Uyghur prisoners were sometimes forced to kneel, punched, a plastic bag would be tied over their head in order to induce suffocation and the bag would only be removed when they begin struggling to breathe. Sometimes, their limbs were tied, and waterpipes were inserted in their mouth to force water into their lungs. This was done in order to force Uyghurs to reject their religion and to confess that they had committed the crimes they were accused of. They were forced to sign confessions to admit that they are terrorists and also to “denounce” and provide a list of their relatives and friends as being terrorists.
8. Other methods of torture of Uyghurs included using electric rods, which were connected to a male’s penis, in order to electrocute those parts. These methods were used to humiliate and target the ego of Uyghur prisoners. Sometimes hammers were used to break the legs of prisoners. Sometimes, prisoners were left to starve and then some food was offered, in order to taunt them, to those prisoners who were willing to turn on and attack other prisoners. These methods were used to target the prisoners mentally and psychologically. This caused some prisoners to go crazy. And when this happened, prisoners were stripped naked doused in cold water. These torture methods were used systematically against Uyghurs.
9. I think such torture against Uyghurs took place because it was encouraged by central Chinese Government. This is because, according to Chinese government policy, Uyghurs are systematically and collectively defined as “terrorists.” Thus, severe repression and torture against Uyghurs is encouraged by the Chinese government, because Uyghurs are mistrusted and enemies. And many of my fellow police officers were ready to accept these explanations to repress the Uyghurs. This is because they believed that, even if a Uyghur had not yet committed any terrorist offenses, it was only a matter of time before they do.
10. As part of the national policy of seeing Uyghurs as automatically enemies/terrorists, as part of my police training, I was taught to see Uyghurs as “the enemy.” If a Chinese police officer decided to arrest Uyghurs, we were told to invent reasons/pretext and to make the arrest appear as legal/plausible as possible. This is why torture and electrocutions were also routinely administered to Uyghurs
11. The children of many adults in the concentration camps have been taken into State orphanages, where they have been assimilated into Han Chinese culture.
12. I think that Uyghurs are targeted by the Chinese government in order to implement China’s “One China” policy. In so doing, the Chinese government wants to destroy the identity of Uyghurs and promote Han Chinese identity. There is also an issue with corruption and natural resources in Xinjiang. These natural resources are claimed by both the Uyghurs and the Chinese government. Thus, at the moment, the arrangement in Xinjiang is like a colonial system, where the mainland Chinese government takes all the natural resources without really respecting the local populations. And if the local populations protest, they are characterised as “enemies” of the government. And this is why all Uyghurs are defined as enemies.