The Chief Witness: escape from China’s modern-day concentration camps

by Sayragul Sauytbay

A shocking depiction of one of the world’s most ruthless regimes — and the story of one woman’s fight to survive.

I will never forget the camp. I cannot forget the eyes of the prisoners, expecting me to do something for them. They are innocent. I have to tell their story, to tell about the darkness they are in. It is so easy to suffocate us with the demons of powerlessness, shame, and guilt. But we aren’t the ones who should feel ashamed.

Born in China’s north-western province, Sayragul Sauytbay trained as a doctor before being appointed a senior civil servant. But her life was upended when the Chinese authorities incarcerated her. Her crime: being Kazakh, one of China’s ethnic minorities.

The north-western province borders the largest number of foreign nations and is the point in China that is the closest to Europe. In recent years it has become home to over 1,200 penal camps — modern-day gulags that are estimated to house three million members of the Kazakh and Uyghur minorities. Imprisoned solely due to their ethnicity, inmates are subjected to relentless punishment and torture, including being beaten, raped, and used as subjects for medical experiments. The camps represent the greatest systematic incarceration of an entire people since the Third Reich.

In prison, Sauytbay was put to work teaching Chinese language, culture, and politics, in the course of which she gained access to secret information that revealed Beijing’s long-term plans to undermine not only its minorities, but democracies around the world. Upon her escape to Europe she was reunited with her family, but still lives under constant threat of reprisal.

This rare testimony from the biggest surveillance state in the world reveals not only the full, frightening scope of China’s tyrannical ambitions, but also the resilience and courage of its author.

Genres: Nonfiction, China, Memoir, Politics, Biography, Asia, Biography Memoir

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 4, 2021

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 3 out of 5]

Update 2 I don't feel that this is an entirely honest book, presenting the story that the author wishes to tell, and leaving out crucial details that don't fit her agenda. Like why the Uighurs but not the much more numerous Hui Muslims (8.6 million of them) were persecuted. She makes out that they were persecuted just because they were Muslims. She never mentions the turn towards fundamentalism that came about after 9/11 and with the spread of the internet. Both of these fueled the Uighur's agitating for autonmy and separation from China. She doesn't mention the terrorist acts of the Uighur's, (not many, but continual), nor that there were Uighurs going through Turkey to the Taliban and ISIS.

None of the above would have weakened her story. She wants to portray the Chinese as totally evil towards the Uighurs for no reason at all other than they are Islamophobic to the core. They aren't they are totally evil towards the Uighurs and against the overwhelming majority for no reason at all. But it isn't Islamophobia that drives the Chinese evil, or else the Hui would be in the same boat.

I have now read several books on the Chinese and Uighurs, and followed up with research into Muslims in China. The Uighurs are ethnic Turkic people, but the Hui are not, they are Asian and look Chinese. See https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/C....
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Update I reviewed a similar book, In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colonynot a personal story, but an overview with implications for all of us, especially those who use phones made in China (all of us!). That one did not have the issue that this one does so despite copious notes, I was uncomfortable reviewing it (despite all the parallels between the Muslims in China and the Jews in Germany, there was no mention of that at all, and it seemed deliberate and I wondered why.)
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Non-Review I cannot review this book. I got it the day of publication, was enthralled by the appalling story of the Uighyers in Khazakstan being subjugated by the Chinese. In many ways it mirrored Nazi Germany, the repression and banning of their religion because they were Muslims, the forced withdrawal from public life and education, the limited opportunities for work, the marking out, the different id cards, and then forced deportation to the concentration camps.

Given all this, the above must be obvious to everyone who reads the book certainly it has been to everyone I've talked to in the shop without me mentioning it first. The omission is of any mention of the Nazi concentration camps, the persecution of Jews for their religion, Jews, Nazis, the parallels to the Holocaust. I cannot believe that neither the author nor the ghost-writer (joint author, I think she is German as the book was published there first) thought of it. It must have been a deliberate decision. But why?

Ironically, in the UK, the lone protest until it became big news was from the Jews.

This casts doubt on much of the book for me. What other major omissions were there? Can this horrific story be believed or has it been written from an angle and with an agenda that has been concealed?

So I have all these notes, I definitely believe in the atrocious story with all my heart, but my head says, whoah.... Also this book which should make a difference won't because no matter what bad stories come out of China see Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's Production Game and more recently, Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win because the world's priorities are getting things they want, preferably cheap.

The world does not care how corrupt they are, how they have bribed our politicians and Silicone Valley with money and contracts, or that they are responsible for most of the polluting gasses in the world. They make things cheap, that means they get a free pass on human rights. A free pass on occupying Tibet (Tibet is not sexy like Palestine), the going back on promises and clamp-down on freedom in Hong Kong. Same as Saudi Arabia for Oil and Bahrain for exotic holidays in the sun.

Where are all the activists in the US and Europe when it comes to the Muslims in China and the Uighyers of Khazakstan? It is only lives at home that matter?
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Notes on Reading I didn't want to review this book by putting my own interpretation on it. I had prepared a iist of quotes and was just going to post them with a line or two of introduction for each one. I wrote all of this on my phone. Tonight whilst going on an exercise walk at sunset around the marina with my son, my phone came off it's leash and flew into the deep blue sea. It took with it my driver's licence, vaccination card and my credit cards. Oh dear. So now I'm going to have to write a review, not quotes. Still, must look on the bright side, I might have to cancel and get new credit cards but at least I know no one is using them. (Ironically, nearly a year later, and I've lost my cards again, March 2022..)

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to the government in Beijing, Sayragul Sauytbay was guilty since birth and was supposed to spend her whole life in China, repenting and setting her transgression right. What horrific crime had Sayragul Sauytbay committed againts the CCP (Communist Party of China) and the Chinese people? Had she stolen, killed, or plotted a terrorist attack? No. Sayragul Sauytbay's only crime was being born a Kazakh on Chinese soil.
Sayragul was born in East Turkestan, an area that has been home to a predominantly Uighur population, but also to Mongolians, Kyrgyzstanis, Tartars, and the second-largest group, the Kazakhs. In 1949, China violently annexed the whole region, which was strategically advantageous, and Mao renamed it the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang (New Frontier). In her shocking book, Sayragul shows us very clearly exactly how much autonomy the indigenous people of the region had.

Despite all that happened to her later in life, Sayragul is convinced she has been born lucky. At least, she knew how to dodge death. As she muses about her childhood in the village, about her parents and many siblings, she vividly remembers her multiple encounters with death. She was not even one-year old when the basket she was in fell off a camel's back and tumbled down into a gourge. To all the villagers' disbelief, she was unscathed, sleeping peacefully. When she was two, she fell asleep in a cave teeming with poisonous snakes; not one of them bit her. She cheated death again when she was five, and so it seems that death was willing to let her cheat for many years to come. This luck, together with Sayragul's remarkable resilience, was what drove her through the hell her life had become.

Her book is written like a diary. She gives the reader more than a glimpse into her personal life. At first, I was impatient, constantly asking myself, "But when will she finally get to the camps?" Then, however, I became fascinated by her whole story. It was the little details from one woman's daily life that gave me the graphic picture of a whole ethnic group being deliberately and mercilessly exterminated. It is her thoughts, her beautiful descriptions that made my heart ache for her.

Sayragul was a smart, ambitious girl. She did not care about boys and marriage; she went on to study medicine, and at university she first encountered discrimination and prejudice. By the time, Deng Xiaoping's slightly more relaxed regime was over, and the CCP was slowly driving China back towards Maoism. "70% of what Mao did for the country was good," the new propaganda boomed. "The rest are insignificant mistakes." Sayragul remembers how each paper she submitted, no matter its subject, had to extol the accomplishments of the CCP or there was no chance of receiving a high mark, how the Chinese students spied on the Kazakh and Uighur ones. (Soviet Union, is that you?) Then, as she found a well-paid job at a hospital, she came to realize that while all patients are equal, indigenous patients are less equal.

But the real shock came when she was called back to her village to tend to her ill mother. The government in Beijing had already started building an invisible wall around East Turkestan. What more, it had launched a project to Sinicise China’s most resource-rich province. It paid Han Chinese people to move to the region and allowed them to have two children. The Chinese came; they took over all the lucrative jobs, and the indigenous population grew even more impoverished. The number of Chinese policemen and guards increased; they stole the animals of the villagers, who managed to survive only through farming, at a whim. The springs around the village were now polluted with chemicals. The behavior of the people changed too. The Kazakhs of the region, Sayragul remembers, had been social and musical. Now they were closed, their minds as beleaguered as the overexploited countryside around them. Out of poverty and desperation, the young men went to work in the new mines and rapidly deteriorated into invalids. But the worst was yet to come.

Since Sayragul could not find a job as a doctor in the village, she became a teacher of Chinese for Kazakh students. Thus, in July 2002, she went on a four- week training course in the regional capital of Ghulja, where teachers from the eleven administrative divisions had been brought together, and met her handsome future husband, Uali, who at the time was pursued by two other beautiful women but who fell in love with Sayragul at first sight; they married after two years of his courting her.

Meanwhile, one political campaign followed hard on the heels of another. The CCP introduced a new subject, “Xinjiang”: a history lesson that was "like a stuck record," writes Sayragul. Xinjiang is an inseparable part of China. And not just since Mao — apparently, the Kazakhs and Uighurs of the province have been Chinese for centuries. Thanks to the influence of the Chinese, the kids at school read, the primitive Uighurs and Kazakhs in that remote region with its backwards culture had learned to live like normal, civilised human beings.
In addition to brainwashing, the Party literally shut the mouths of indigenous people: Sayragul was horrified to find out that Chinese kindergarten teachers put sticky tape over the mouths of her son and the other children who spoke Kazakh.

After Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon on September 11 2001, Beijing announced a "global war on terrorism." This was a flimsy reason to clamp down on East Turkestan more brutally than ever. Islam merely served as a suitable pretext to eradicate Uighur and Kazakh culture. Suddenly, reading the Koran, being Muslim, or simply not having a Chinese name was enough to be suspected of terrorism. Beijing was deliberate sowing hatred and fear of Kazakhs and Uighurs among the Han Chinese. Tyranic governments can survive only with the help of extensive propaganda, after all, and it needed some support for the mass genocide it was going to conduct.
In 2009, after an Uighur girl was raped by Chinese men, a riot broke out. Thousands of Uighurs held a large-scale demonstration to protest against discrimination and unremittingly harsh treatment by the government. It was a relatively peaceful demonstration until Chinese operatives, dressed in plain clothes and carrying sticks and knives, attacked their own Chinese compatriots, trying to stir up more conflict and give the other soldiers an excuse to crack down. The soldiers rolled their tanks into the crowd, crushing innocent by-passers, and by the time they were finished, the streets were running with blood and littered with body parts. The next evening the CCP sent plain-clothes officers door to door at night, prohibiting Han Chinese families from stepping outside for the next two days, or from opening the windows or drawing the curtains. Other ethnic groups were not informed. They went about their business like always, suspecting nothing. What followed next was a widespread “purge” in which many innocent Uighurs and Kazakhs were killed. The brutal incident was reported on TV, but was depicted simply as a riot by Uighur terrorists. The words “Uighur” and "terrorist” were now constantly linked so that people would think they were the same thing. The daughter of a friend, Sayragul writes, worked at a crematorium. On the evening of the uprising, she had seen soldiers bring countless human bodies to the crematorium on military trucks and dump them out like rubbish. Among the dead bodies, there were many injured people, crying for help. The police tipped them into the furnace together with the corpses. Yes, we are not talking about the Middle Ages. We are talking about the 21st century.

The invisible wall Beijing had impreceptibly built around East Turkestan now stood in plain view, high and insurmountable. Uali and the children had barely managed to escape to Kazahstan (Sayragul was forbidden to leave because, as a headteacher in a kindergarten, she was considered a governmental worker) when the Party closed the borders and cut off East Turkestan from the rest of the world. Indigenous people could not travel; they could not make calls abroad or chat with anyone outside China on WeChat (the Chinese WhatsApp); their passports were confiscated. But the worst was yet to come.

During a big teacher conference that Sayragul attended, senior Party officials informed them that the CCP was setting up "re-education centers" for indigenous people. They assured the teachers that there was nothing to be afraid of, but Sayragul had long realized that when the Party said that everything would be fine, it actually meant there were a hundred reasons to be alarmed.
It would not a life anymore. It was survival in a constant state of fear. If this was just a harmless integration program, why were people disappearing at night? And how would an eighty-something woman with a college degree benefit from it? Sayragul would soon learn the answers to this troubling questions. After a series of nightly interrogations about her husband, who is labeled a traitor, during which she was beaten and yelled at, she would end up in a camp herself — surprisingly, not as a prisoner but as a teacher and translator.

While I read her description of the camp, I could not believe that such horrors can be possible in modern society. To Sayragul, the prisoners looked like the living dead. They were beaten and crammed into urine- and excrement-filled cells until there was barely any room to move a limb. They were forced to confess to crimes they have never comitted and then were beaten once more for punishment. In the "classroom," Sayragul taught them Chinese customs in a snappish voice — just as she had been instructed. (She had signed her own death sentence, according to which every mistake of hers would be punished with death.) Imagine teaching those sick, ematiated, starved, beaten, raped people Chinese marriage customs! Guards with machine guns were watching the prisoners' every move. Those who did not sit straight, who missed even a word of the praises, such as "Without the CCP there would not be New China," they were supposed to parrot, who dared to stare, who dared to breathe in a un-Chinese way, was dragged to the black room. Yes, the camp had its own torture room, equipped with electric chairs, "[t]asers and police cudgels in various shapes and sizes: thick, thin, long, and short, [i]ron rods used to fix the hands and feet in agonising positions behind a person’s back, designed to inflict the maximum possible pain," implements used to pull out fingernails and toenails, a long stick with a sharpened end used for jabbing into a person’s flesh etc. We are not talking about the age of the Inquisition. We are talking about modern China, about year 2018.
The prisoners, as well as Sayragul, were also experimented on. Pills were literally forced down their throats. Sayragul was supposed to take them too, but a nurse – the only member of the camp staff to show any humanity whatsoever – warned her they were poisonous, designed to make the men sick and the women infertile. The Party's final goal was not to turn those people into obedient tools of the state, which was obviously impossible; it was to exterminate them.
When in charge of examining the meticulously kept prisoner medical records the camp staff kept, Sayragul noticed that every strong, healthy person had a red "X" on his record. She also noticed that exactly those people disappeared mysteriously at night. Soon she found out why: they were used either as slave labor in the interior of the vast country or were killed for organs. That's when she realized why so many healthy human organs were available for medical students at university. The Chinese government sold most of them to the countries of the Middle East, where people preferred to receive the organ of another Muslim.

Sayragul never lost hope she would made it out of the camp alive. The moment she saw the unspeakable horrors for the first time, she comitted herself to remembering everything to the smallest detail so that she would tell the world later. For instance, she remembered the paper she was shown by smug Chinese official, a classified Beijing document explaining the government's Three- Step plan:
Step One: 2014–2015: Assimilate those who are willing in Xinjiang, and eliminate those who are not.
Step Two: 2025–2035: After assimilation within China is complete, neighbouring countries will be annexed.
Step Three: 2035–2055: After the realisation of the Chinese dream comes the occupation of Europe.

This sounds like an excerpt from a sick horror novel. But this idea is actually nurtured by the madmen from the CCP. "This is not a nightmare. This is reality," is the message Sayragul, this extraordinary brave woman, wants to convey. It's not the Chinese people who want to exterminate an ethnic group and conquer the world; it's the perverted government in Beijing that is responsible for shattering lives. They can and have to be stopped, but had any of the big Western firms such as Microsoft, Bosch, Adidas, and Lacoste, which benefit from slave Kazakh and Uighur labor, lifted a finger? Siemens keeps supplying crucial infrastructure, among other things, to the camps where innocent people are held against their will, monitored 24/7, and tortured. That's not how you stop such a great evil from enveloping the world. That's not how you battle the mad government of the scariest modern surveillance state. That should not be the only result of Sayragul's suffering. Her courage to withstand torture and death threats both in China and in Kazahkstan, one of the corruption-ridden states that are so indebted to the vast empire next door that was ready to deliver Sayragul back to the Chinese secret police (which would have happened had not Serikzhan Bilash, the founder of Atajurt, an organisation dedicated to saving Kazakh and Uighur people imprisoned in China's modern-day concentration camps, raised hue and cry for the whole world to hear), has to change something.

This book is a gallery of nightmares. I finished it yesterday and had trouble sleeping the whole night. There was blood, blood, blood everywhere around me, just like the blood Sayragul saw all over the tortured victims of the Party's "re-education." But the chilling, unfathomable fact is that my nightmare is someone else's reality. According to the estimations made by the United Nations and humanitarian organizations, in 2019 three million indigenous people were prisoners in those camps of hell. Confronted with satellite images, Beijing akcnowledged the existence of this so-called "re-educational centers." However, acknowledgement does not mean change. Who knows how many innocents are being tortured in those camps today? Are they four million already? Maybe five? It's not the Kazakh girl raped by three policemen in front of all the rest of her imprisoned, tortured compatriots that has to be re-educated. It's the leaders of the CCP.
Sayragul Sauytbay's book is a must-read. For everyone. It doesn't matter that this will be the most hair-raising read of your whole life. It doesn't matter that you have a weak stomach. Beijing is trying to silence all witnesses. We have to read Sayragul's testimony because the only way to help is to raise worldwide awareness.

[Jeanette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read and understand this book's core. What is happening RIGHT NOW in China.

It's not an enjoyable read and this author is beyond brave. I can't imagine living through the separations and horrors she has experienced. And there are at least 3 million just like her only without her skills. And this set up is allowed by the rest of the world.

This type of government is so horrendous and so despicable. But then in almost all "group think" of this nature you have to "break a few eggs" to make their supposed omelet.

Instead of WWII constant print and embedding in the past- all humans should be looking at stopping today's genocides. This author is a beginning and continued voice for all the huge victim groups. While countless numbers worldwide shut their eyes and deal with China as if they were not the authoritarian bullies and daily murderers that they are.

[Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the toughest book I've ever read, or in this case listening to. The horrors this author had to endorse and the horror she seen was hard to grasp. I did not think things like this happened in the world today in such large scale and I honestly thought concentration camps was a thing in history books. I highly recommend listening to this book as I think this is a very important book. But the treatment from other humans to other humans is horrifying

[Victoria Emerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book of 2021. Sayragul is a remarkably brave woman who has escaped China and its Communist Party. Even while she lives outside of China, she still lives in constant fear from the torment of the Chinese secret police.

This is an uncomfortable, eye opening read. 2021 China has multiple concentration camps with millions of people enslaved and tortured in them simply for having a different political opinion / being part of a minority group. No one talks about this.

The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda, racism and draconian measures to control their people and ultimately the world is petrifying. What’s happening right now is essentially comparable to WW2 and the uprising of Germany’s Nazi Party.

You need to inform yourself of these horrors and read this.

[Emily Carter-Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

As a history teacher, one of the biggest messages to my students is that we are simply learning about a case study of a bigger concept. For example, World War 1 is just one example of a war. The Chartist movement is just one example of ordinary people protesting for increased rights and against inequality. As part of the KS3 National Curriculum, students must study the Holocaust, one of many (unfortunately) genocides that have blighted human history. Why did it happen? How did it happen? How can we ensure it doesn't happen again? This is something that every single person should know, but yet we seem to be letting it happen all over again.

The truth is there is a genocide happening right now in China. In fact, this isn't the only genocide occurring in the world at the moment, but I will focus on the persecution of Muslim minorities in China here. This has only recently been declared as a genocide even though it really has been known about for a good few years now. China has tried to stop talks about this by trying to get states to boycott UN events and detaining, threatening and killing anyone who speaks out against the CCP.

Sauytbay was born in East Turkestan (Xinjiang in Chinese) in the North-West of China. This memoir details the ever growing restrictions and humiliations dealt to Muslims and ethnic minorities in this region from the 1970s to the present day and mirrors to such a high degree the actions of the Nazi part in Germany in the 1930s and 50s. From increased surveillance, pledging allegiance to the CCP and suppressing "undesirable" non-Chinese culture, the people of East Turkestan have been systematically oppressed for years. In the past 5 years of so this has also led to concentration camps being built where Uighur and Kazakh Muslims are brainwashed, kept in appalling conditions and routinely raped and tortured.

Even after escaping this horrendous regime, Sauytbay was not safe. Through China's economic expansion and lending of money to many poorer surrounding nations, they have a big political influence in these countries and Sauytbay had to fight for her freedom away from Kazakhstan where she had initially sought asylum.

Sayragul Sauytbay is such a brave woman and individuals like her are ensuring that the truth comes to light. This is not something we can ignore. This must be acted on.

[Emer Ní Conchúir · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you only read one book this year please make it this one.

This book is hard to read, it's hard to be confronted with the stark realities of the Chinese concentration camps.

This was June's pick for the book club in work but it has taken me this long to get through it because it was emotionally draining to read it. I cannot begin to fathom have emotionally and physically draining it was to live it.

Please read this book and speak out about the plight of the Uighrs and Kazakh people in East Turkistan.

💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪

TW:Sexual Assualt

[Cristin Gallant · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent first hand account of the atrocities the CCP is committing against millions, in modern day concentrations camps in North Western China. Even after she continues to receive daily threats against her life and the lives of her family members, the author is still speaking out about what she experienced and warning others.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Most Powerful Book on China's Camps

This is a very hard to read book. Harrowing read.
There were some parts I was getting very uneasy while reading.

Very true and meaningful survival story.

I have read multiple books on China's camps, and this was by-far the most impactful one.

Highly recommend.

Recommended Reading
I recommend reading this alongside:
The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem
In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony
No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs
Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide
A Stone is Most Precious Where it Belongs

Important read

4.9/5

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 5 out of 5]

History repeats itself.
New book, old story.
Not only are millions of people, at this moment, being held in concentration camps, but nothing is being done about it.
Of all the depressing things going on these days - this one is the harsh. (I'm having to make up words, present vocabulary not being sufficient.)

[Jamie Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read regarding the truth in China

Eye opening about China and what they are doing to silence opposition and destroy other cultures. I really think everyone should read this to see the truth about the atrocities taking place in China.

[Simon Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m sure that I’ve now got a Red Cross against my name in China for reading this book.
This book is well structured and written in a style that is easy and accessible to read. EVERYONE SHOULD READ IT. This is highly likely to be the Canary in the cage of global politics and freedoms. Freedoms that have been hard won over years and that we currently and casually take for granted. The content will undoubtedly be challenged not least because of its deeply disturbing content. I strongly suspect that western freedoms taken for granted made it hard for me to comprehend how difficult life really can in a closed autocratic state. Equally the parallels with Nazi Germany can not be missed either with the purest Chinese dominating, undermining and dehumanising other internal cultures and religions. (With an eye of doing the same globally too) I couldn’t sleep some nights after reading parts of the book.

[Glenn Franco Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sayragul Sauytbay has been persecuted solely because of her ethnicity AND religion, both crimes against humanity.

She has taken refuge in Germany, a country also known for concentration camps. Let's hope China's concentration camps, which are already horrific, do not become like the death camps of the "new Germany" of the 1930s and 1940s to the end of WWII.

Ms. Sauytbay is courageous. She stands as a witness to a horror that many world leaders avoid discussing, because economic ties with China override their humanitarian concerns. Much like the United States overlooked the horrors of "new Germany" in the 1930s, so that its businesses could prosper by trade with Nazi Germany.

Is it too much to ask that we live in peace and harmony?

[Tasmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If this will not get you angry while reading, I don't know what will.

This book is not for sensitive minds. Trigger warnings for any type of violence. Unfortunately, this is not a fiction horror book. This is a memoir. This is reality. A reality that impacts people in the west more than we think. And an eye-opener to the unbelievable, inhumane things happening that not even the worst villains of literature could even think of.
Thank you to everyone working on this book and everyone standing behind Sayragul, so that she could make it this far and raise her voice despite all efforts of silencing her.

[Michelle Keyatta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow-this is really happening in our current times, not decades ago. So many moments I was in dismay and it was a tough (emotional) book to get through. What she’s said in the book combined with what we already know about the planned expansion of the CCP is absolutely terrifying. The countries overtaken and indebted by the BRI and the loss of freedom makes one fear for the times ahead. Funny enough, a new Economist issue arrived today, the headline on the front: “Power & Paranoia: The CCP at 100”. An article about population control of Xinjiang mirrored what the book said.

[D.T.]

This is a tough book to rate. I don’t know how Sayragul survived. She is truly resilient.

[mari_liest · Rating 5 out of 5]

CN: Gewalt, Folter, Vergewaltigung, Missbrauch, psych. Gewalt

"Die Kronzeugin" ist ein weiterer erschütternder Bericht einer Zeitzeugin über die Gräueltaten und Menschenrechtsverletzungen in den sogenannten „Umerziehungslagern“ für ethnische Minderheiten (Uigur*innen und Kasach*innen) in China. Sie war Staatsbeamtin und Direktorin in Schulen, bevor sie selbst eine Insassin eines solchen Lagers wurde. Sie schildert ihre persönlichen Erfahrungen, ihre Flucht und einen beklemmenden (und ich sage Euch, dass es definitiv mehr als beklemmend ist – grauenhaft, menschenunwürdig, barbarisch, abscheulich, horrormäßig, HÖLLE!!) Einblick in das grausame System der Unterdrückung und Repression. Ein System, dass die chinesische Regierung „Umerziehung“ nennt.

Ein weiteres Buch deckt die brutale Realität auf, in der unschuldige Menschen ohne Gerichtsverfahren festgehalten, gefoltert, missbraucht, verstümmelt, getötet werden. Sauytbay beschreibt die unmenschlichen Bedingungen, das Leid und erzählt von den grausamen Verhören und dem psychischen Druck, dem sie alle täglich ausgesetzt sind. Taten wie der Missbrauch von Frauen vor den Augen anderer Insass*innen – wer hier nur einen Pieps von sich gibt, wandert in den schwarzen Raum und wird nie mehr gesehen.

Mittlerweile lebt die Autorin mit ihrer Familie in Schweden, jedoch immer noch nicht in Ruhe und Frieden, denn die Telefonate mit (Be-)Drohungen hören nicht auf. Ihr Mut und die Entschlossenheit, ihre Stimme zu erheben und die Welt auf die Verbrechen in China aufmerksam zu machen, haben meinen größten Respekt.

Dies ist mein drittes Buch zu diesem Thema und ich möchte Euch auch dieses ans Herz legen, sofern ihr euch da thematisch bzw. inhaltlich drüber seht!

Die Autorin wurde mit dem Internationalen Nürnberger Menschenrechtspreis ausgezeichnet!

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sayragul Sauytbay shares her life story, her oppression, and her escape from China in The Chief Witness, a very highly recommended biography. She was trained as a doctor but later retrained as a teacher and was appointed a senior civil servant. She was arrested and sent to a prison based only on her ethnicity. She managed to escape from China into Kazakhstan where she was reunited with her family who had fled there years before. Shockingly, she was then arrested by the secret police in Kazakhstan (with the CCP involved) and put on trial for entering the country illegally. It was during her trial that her courage to speak out over what was happening in China resulted in worldwide attention and support for her. Since Sauytbay shares her whole life story we get to know her childhood, her feelings, and the lifestyle of her family before the CCP and the camps threatened her life. She and her family now live in Sweden but still have the CCP calling and threatening her.

Sauytbay was born a Kazakh in what was called East Turkestan until China annexed the whole region in 1949. Later Mao Zedong renamed it the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang. The area is home to a predominantly Muslim population, chiefly Uighur, but there are also Mongolians, Kyrgyzstanis, and Tartars. The north-western province has also become home to over 1,200 penal camps which are called "reeducation camps" where all these minorities are being incarcerated beaten, raped, tortured, and used as subjects for medical experiments simply based on their ethnic heritage and religion. They are treated as slave labor or bodies to harvest organs from by the CCP. This Chronicles the deliberate extermination of an entire ethnic group. But the CCP ambitions are far beyond this as they have plans to conquer the whole world using the same nefarious strategies. As long as companies and citizens in the free world fail to hold China accountable and continue to value financial interests above human rights, we will be selling our souls to the devil.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Scribe Publications
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2021/0...

[WiseB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon complete reading of this biography by Sayragul Sauytbay, who is of Kazakh ethnicity, one can hardly imagine the inhumane and cruel actions that the Chinese Communist Party and its operators have been doing to the minority ethnic groups (Turkic Muslims like Kazakhs, Uyghurs) for assimilation purpose in the north west region of China. Sayragul obviously was exposed and suffered from the various bad things this authoritarian government had done to her and the others, which I admire the trauma and painful memories she had undertaken again in order to document those happenings in the book. Apart from the ordeals she had in China, after fleeing from China to Kazakhstan (her motherland), it is surprising that the Kazakhstan government wanted to secretly deport her back to China ... because it owes China multi billion dollars for projects committed in relation to China's Belt and Road Initiative. This seems to be the approach China has been using to bind those states (along the Belt and Road) through financial deals and investments with their loyalty to China's ambition.

The sad part in history for these happenings in China is that the world, including the free world countries, is only paying lip service denouncing the wrong doings ... internment camps, rapes, tortures, forced labor etc, without tangible actions that can make China withdraw from atrocity activities in enslaving and harming the ethnic minorities. China definitely knows the weakness of these countries ... economic interests for the states and businesses comes first, while human rights and justice in the back seat with occasional citing to draw intermittent attention. Even worse is China's ability to extend its purposes overseas using local Chinese (by means of nationalism, money, threat etc) to act as operators performing espionage, demonstration, propaganda and intimidation on its designated targets.

[Cathryn Wellner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few of us in the West will ever be detained in concentration camps simply because of our cultural heritage. Sayragul Sauytbay's crime was to be Kazakh in a region around which China was slowly tightening the noose. Her extraordinary memoir lays bare China's nefarious, long-range plan for world domination. They have put the plan into play in Xinjiang, where the dominant Muslims have been forced to deny their religion, eat pork, parrot the Communist party's rhetoric, and, in the case of hundreds of thousands, endure torture, rape, and imprisonment.

The memoir is plea to the West to respond to the horrors and halt the slow march of oppression of ethnic minorities. Given the anti-democratic backlash of the West's own far-right groups, the warnings within Sauytbay's book ring louder than ever. Her nightmare shows no sign of ending. Our task is to pay attention and to speak out.

[Anett Kovacs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die Kronzeugin ist die unfassbare Geschichte der ehemaligen chinesischen Staatsbeamtin Sayragul Sauytbay - ihr Leben im Überwachungsstaat, ihre Arbeit im Umerziehungslager als Lehrerin der chinesischen Sprache und Staatspropaganda, ihre Inhaftierung und schließlich Flucht. Sie berichtet vom Leben der Kasachen und Uighuren in der Region Xinjiang und der zunehmenden Unterdrückung dieser Volksgruppen in China. Sie beschreibt die unmenschlichen Bedingungen in den Umerziehungslagern, die systematische Ausrottung verschiedener Kulturen und die Pläne der Politik, mehr und mehr Staaten abhängig von China zu machen.
Ein wirklich lesenswertes und erschütterndes Buch, was man nur weiterempfehlen kann.

[Loretta Mitro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leaders of every country should read this book, especially democratic countries, and countries that have accepted help from the Chinese. The Chinese never do anything without a log-term plan in mind. If people like Sayragul Sauybay is brave enough to stand up to the Chinese and tell the world the truth about the situation in East Turkistan, then "The G-7" and their friends should not hesitate to stand up to them, and take action against the Chinese human-rights violations.

[Sams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein unglaubliches Buch, und eine unglaubliche Geschichte die einem so surreal vorkommt, aufgrund dessen dass sie erstaunlicherweise viele Parallelen zum Klassiker von Goerge Orwell „1984“ beinhaltet; bloß das diese Geschehnisse der Wirklichkeit entsprechen. Es ist erschreckend, erschütternd und lesenswert.
Ein Buch das man besten Herzens weiterempfehlen kann und sollte.

[Elise Broughton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartwrenching, scary and perhaps even prophetic.

I chose this rating so that maybe more people will become aware of China's, its transgressions, it's ungodliness, its thirst for more money, power and evil.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book that everyone should read.....I am sure it is a true account but even if it is only 25% accurate then it is an appalling human rights issue. The authors should be admired for speaking out.

[Trina · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This is terrifying and eye opening for someone like me who has willfully chosen to limit my news intake over the last 1-2 years. If you've heard of the internment camps in China, this will give you a first-hand account.

[Malte · Rating 5 out of 5]

ACHTUNG (sensible Inhalte): Meine Rezension enthält Passagen über die im Buch erwähnten gräulichen und gewaltsamen Handlungen!

Durch mein steigendes Interesse an Asien (und besonders an China), bin ich auf Die Kronzeugin, den Augenzeugenbericht von Sayragul Sauytbay, gestoßen. Ein Buch, dass mich wie kein anderes zuvor geschockt hat. Wer sich mit der Geschichte und Politik Chinas auseinandersetzen will, der kommt an den Berichten von Sayragul nicht vorbei.

Das Buch beschreibt ihr Leben bis zum heutigen Tage: ihre Geburt, wo und wie sie aufgewachsen ist und wie sie ihre Karriere zuerst als Ärztin, dann als Lehrerin startete; immer im Fokus die beeinflussende Politik der KPCh auf seine Staatsbürger. Der Kern von Sayraguls Geschichte basiert auf ihren Erlebnissen in den "Umerziehungslagern" (oder besser gesagt der zweiten Generation von Konzentrationslagern) in Ostturkestan (Xinjiang).

Wie wir wahrscheinlich alle, habe auch ich vor längerer Zeit schon von den Gräueltaten der chinesischen Partei gehört. Wenn man aber schwarz auf weiß liest, welche "Methoden" in den dortigen Konzentrationslagern angewendet werden, so wird einem mehr als übel - wohin die perfiden Gedanken von Menschen führen können. Eine besonders grauenhafte - im Buch beschriebene - Misshandlung löst in mir immer noch extrem Schock aus: um zu überprüfen, ob die Gefangenen inzwischen ihrem Glauben abgeschworen haben, musste sich eine Gruppe im Halbkreis in einem Raum hinsetzen. Drei maskierte Männer standen vor der Gruppe und riefen den Namen eines jungen (20-jährigen) Mädchens auf. Sie musste sich auf den Boden legen und wurde dreimal hintereinander, vor den Augen der anderen Gegangenen, von den maskierten Männern vergewaltigt. Jeder, der versuchte ihr zur Hilfe zu eilen oder gegen die Misshandlung protestierte, wurde von den Wachen abgeführt (und wahrscheinlich ebenfalls misshandelt).

Ich habe mich immer gefragt, wie es wohl damals war, als die Welt von den Konzentrationslagern der Nazis erfuhr, aber es einfach hat geschehen lassen. Nun sind wir wieder in so einer Situation: vielleicht für andere zu weit weg, vielleicht haben die Geschehnisse zu wenig Präsenz in den Medien, ich weiß nicht. Dennoch bin ich regelrecht angewidert, dass so etwas in einem hochmodernen Land wie China passiert.

Da ich dieses Buch in wenigen Tagen verschlungen habe und wir gerade dazu verpflichtet sind, uns über das Schicksal der Uiguiren zu informieren und zu handeln, empfehle ich dieses Buch ausdrücklich und gebe der äußerst gelungen Rekapitulation von Sayragul Sauytbays Leben durch Alexandra Cavelius fünf Sterne!

[Amber Foxx · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is shocking in many ways, and yet it also portrays the joyful and ordinary aspects of life in East Turkestan, called Xinjiang by China, before the worst of the oppression took over. The author shows the gradual deterioration of conditions from an indigenous pastoralist rural society, a village with its traditional customs, its marriages and festivals, to a place that became more and more polluted, more damaged, more controlled by the Chinese government in ways that exploit the land and the people. Anyone who has ever thought of colonization and the exploitation of indigenous people will find that part of the story appalling enough. But then it gets worse, as the internment of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other indigenous Muslim peoples of East Turkestan (Xinjiang) begins to accelerate. The author worked so hard to stay out of trouble with the authorities, and yet nothing she could do could prevent what happened to her. Her husband and two children left for Kazakhstan, and she thought she could stay at home and work a little longer and try to get her passport back; the Chinese government had confiscated the passports of anyone who worked for them. As a teacher, she worked for the government, so she was stuck. She became more and more of a prisoner. The government required indigenous people to share a home with a Chinese family that had been moved to their region, and in many cases, such as hers, the female Kazakh had to go to the home of a Chinese man. Fortunately for her, she was able to bribe her host into letting her actually go to her own bed at night, but she had to sneak out because everything was being monitored. She was fortunate that he was more interested in money than rape.
Eventually, she was taken to teach at one of the internment camps, and I believe that it is only because she was a teacher that she isn't dead. The conditions she describes in the camps are profoundly distressing—torture, neglect, organ harvesting, rape, structural cruelty—yet the book is worth reading in spite of the gut-wrenching awfulness. We should be aware of this ongoing human rights violation, especially those in power who deal with China in politics or business.
The author was able to escape to Kazakhstan and rejoin her family. It took her the longest time to try to get asylum in Kazakhstan, without success, with the Chinese government breathing down the Kazakh government's neck all the time. She finally got asylum in Sweden with her family.

[Ad Pluijmers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wat een enorme tragiek speelt zich af in China’s ‘autonome’ regio Xinjiang, het vroegere Oost-Turkestan. De oorspronkelijke bewoners waren overwegend islamitische groepen, zoals de Kazachen en de Oeigoeren. Deze bevolkingsgroepen zijn de afgelopen jaren langzaamaan ‘verdund’ door ‘immigratie’ van Han-Chinezen, die geacht worden zich volledig aan de opvattingen van de CCP (Chinese Communistische Partij) te houden en daar de lokale bevolking in mee te nemen. Het lijkt heel erg op de methodes van Hitler: langzaam beginnen met steeds minder rechten voor selecte groeperingen; hun eigen talen worden vervangen door Chinees; het aanhangen van islam is verboden; het reizen naar het buitenland wordt verboden en het openlijk aanhangen van de Communistische Partij en de leider van China is een must. Het lijkt wel of de tijd van Mao weer terug is…

Er is heel weinig voor nodig om in één van de strafkampen (door China eufemistisch ‘opleidings-‘ of ‘opvoedingskampen’ genoemd) geplaatst te worden. Uit dit indrukwekkende ooggetuigenverslag van Sayragul Sauytbay blijkt dat daar onmenselijke behandelingen plaatsvinden, alles bedoeld om die personen compleet de demoraliseren. Dat wordt nog versterkt door de continue dreiging om hun familieleden iets aan te doen. Het is aan de durf en het doorzettingsvermogen van de schrijfster te danken dat dit excessieve fysieke en psychologische geweld nu aan de wereld getoond kan worden. Ze neemt daar grote risico’s mee, want in het naburige Kazachstan (waar haar rechtszaak zich afspeelde) en zelfs in het veilige Zweden waar ze nu met haar familie woont, weten functionarissen in dienst van de CCP haar te vinden om druk op haar en haar gezin uit te oefenen. Gelukkig tegenwoordig alleen nog maar telefonisch, maar dat is al dreigend genoeg.

De regio lijkt in niets meer op de rustige islamitische streek die het was toen ik zelf in 1991 Xinjiang bezocht. Urumqi was toen al wel een oninteressante industriële stad. Maar de vriendelijkheid en nieuwsgierigheid van de mensen op straat en op de fraaie markten in plaatsen als Kashgar en Aksu waren toen vrij duidelijk. Moskeeën waren vrij te bezichtigen en het was geen probleem om in het publiek de lokale bevolking te fotograferen. Wat een treurnis dat bezoeken aan de regio tegenwoordig alleen onder ‘begeleiding’ (of stalking) van Chinese begeleiders kan. En dan is dat voor ‘toeristen’ slechts een praktische horde; voor de oorspronkelijke bewoners is het gelijk aan een gevangenis…

[Maite Van Den Borre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Iedereen zou dit boek moeten lezen. Niet alleen toont het de onmetelijke hypocrisie van onder andere de EU aan maar ook bewijst het nog maar eens dat consumptie van Chinese (massaal) geproduceerde goederen eveneens een stille goedkeuring inhoudt van de systematische onderdrukking van Kazachse, Oeigoerse én Chinese individuen.