The following is a detailed summary of Abduweli Ayup’s memoir, Mehbus Rohlar (“Imprisoned Spirits”), which details his arrest and the 458 days that he spent in four different pre-trial detention centers – one in Kashgar and three in Urumqi – prior to being released. To date, it offers the most detailed account of pre-trial detention in Xinjiang. The full memoir has also been translated into English, under the name “Black Land”.
I. THE ARREST
On Friday, August 15, 2013, Abduweli got an urgent phone call from someone he didn’t know, who then came to his home to quickly warn him that people from Urumqi had come to Kashgar to arrest him, and would do so in the coming few days. The person suggested that he clean out his computer and anything else in advance. As Abduweli had heard rumors of plans to arrest him before and had been given trouble by the police following his stay in the US (in Kansas) earlier, he wasn’t sure what to make of this most recent news.

That weekend, he went to visit his mother and the kindergarten that he and others were working on building, but was unable to tell anyone about his concerns or the possibility that he might be detained soon. Preparing himself for the worst, he started to sleep in his clothes.
On Monday, another friend who was helping him out with the kindergarten dropped by, and the two of them went to the kindergarten together. The first half of the day also went by without incident.
Towards the evening, Abduweli decided to meet with his secretary – a friend who was in charge of handling the logistics for both the kindergarten and a language center they ran – and to tell her about what happened, so as to make plans for how to proceed after his arrest. The secretary did not believe him at first, but, following additional explanation, told Abduweli to escape. Fearing that this would only lead to many of his relatives being imprisoned, Abduweli did not wish to do so, but convinced the secretary that he would take her advice, so that she would stop pressing him.
In waiting for the arrest, Abduweli kept thinking of how he wanted to be arrested without his family or friends witnessing it, likening himself to the dog in the Uyghur saying “a good dog dies without anyone noticing”. Monday, too, passed without anyone coming to arrest him.

On August 19, 2013, he was finally taken, with police coming to find him at the kindergarten. So as to avoid conflict between the police and the people there, Abduweli acted as if the police were old friends coming to inquire about the kindergarten, greeting them and getting in the car voluntarily. When he did, a black hood was put over his head, his mouth was taped, and his hands were put behind his back and handcuffed. The car was full of Uyghur police, with one Han Chinese chief, An Jinkun, in the passenger seat. They asked Abduweli for his home address.
When the black hood was removed, Abduweli saw that they had arrived at his neighborhood, with armed police searching his home. Abduweli saw his wife quietly crying, holding their younger daughter in her arms while the older one was playing nearby, unaware of what was happening. Because they could not see inside the car and Abduweli hadn’t been given permission to get out, he did not have the chance to part with them properly.
II. YANBULAQ DETENTION CENTER
He was then hooded again, and the next time that the hood was removed found himself at a police office, which had a fenced-off “cage” with a tiger chair. Abduweli was put inside the metal chair, with his hands, ankles, and neck all fastened. While there, he overheard that four people had come from Urumqi to arrest him, in addition to hearing that half of those arrested were being taken to the Yanbulaq Detention Center just outside of Kashgar (in Doletbagh’s Yanbulaq Village), which is where Abduweli was now.

As he was being interrogated, Abduweli understood that his interrogators had done very little in terms of preparation, with the chief investigator, An, speaking to him in broken Uyghur and focusing on Abduweli’s time in the US and Turkey, and accusing him of collaborating with the CIA and other forces to instigate separatism in the region. At one point, they ordered him to sign a paper charging him with the crime of “concealment of funds”, which would supposedly result in him being detained and investigated for seven days (though Abduweli feared that this would become a prelude for further investigation into political crimes).
Eventually, he started to doze off (possibly from the lack of good sleep in the days prior), and was slapped multiple times, prompting Abduweli to yell at the soldier slapping him and demand why he didn’t just shoot him, since he had a gun. The soldier then gagged Abduweli with a newspaper and started slapping him with a water bottle, but soon switched to poking him in the stomach with an electric prod.
After the first interrogation, Abduweli was stripped naked and sexually abused by a crowd of inmates, following a jailer’s order, who told them to make him “understand the kind of place he’s at now”. He bit his lip until it bled during this time.
He was then taken to his cell, a small room designed for only two inmates. Inside were two L-shaped cement “beds”, and a hole in the ground with a faucet over it, which Abduweli soon understood to be the toilet and the source of the horrible stench in the room. Hoping to dampen the smell, he was about to turn on the water when he was stopped by his cellmate, as doing this would have only made the stench worse.
Sitting down on his bed, Abduweli reflected on the cramped, windowless, and dirty quarters, concluding that it felt like a tomb, save that traditional Uyghur tombs were in fact better and more dignified than this. Looking at the walls, he saw “don’t break, my heart” written on one of them and broke into tears, recalling the traumatic abuse that he had just been subjected to. He thought back to all the opportunities he had previously to stay abroad in the US and, later, to escape from China, and thought of how he could have avoided the horrors he had experienced if he had only done so. Any thought of suicide was stemmed by the room’s padded walls and total lack of objects fit for the purpose.
He was soon befriended by his cellmate, Emetqari, who had been in detention for seven months, after being arrested for teaching religion in Qaghiliq County. During their first exchange, Emetqari was lying down with a towel over his eyes, and told Abduweli that this was to counteract the lights not being turned off at night. He warned Abduweli not to walk into the cell saying “as-salamu alaykum“, as Abduweli had done, since this could result in a heavy beating if the policeman who overheard it was Chinese (the proper thing to say was “reporting!”, in Chinese). He said that the first beating always took place in the vestibule between the main entrance and the cells, and asked Abduweli about his, but Abduweli did not want to tell him.
He also advised Abduweli to get used to using the toilet, regardless of where and how filthy it was, since it was easy for one’s legs, stomach, and kidneys to get messed up in a place like this. However, Abduweli couldn’t bring himself to use the toilet.

Looking around the cell once more, he noticed that there was actually a tiny window the size of a basketball above the toilet, barred over. Outside, he could see the feet of a guard walking back and forth, with the cracks of the electric prod also audible.
Because Abduweli’s prisoner outfit was gray (and not yellow, as reserved for political prisoners), and because Abduweli was supposed to be transferred to Urumqi the next day, Emetqari mistook these for a sign that Abduweli would be released quickly. Despite being from the same area, he wasn’t aware of Abduweli’s kindergarten venture, and did not understand the implicit sensitivity of the case. Abduweli did not tell Emetqari that the people who came for him were from domestic security. (Throughout his memoir, Abduweli refers to “political prisoners” as those taken on “endangering state security” charges, which correspond to Articles 102-113 of the criminal code. Such detainees are typically made to wear special-colored – usually orange – jackets, and are treated significantly worse than the others.)

The next morning, they woke up to the song “The 56 Ethnic Groups are 56 Flowers“, with Emetqari using gestures to notify Abduweli of the camera in the room and also to explain to him that he should wash his face and hands only once, so that the guards not think that he was performing ablutions. They had to fold up their blankets into neat rectangles.
After doing a motionless morning prayer, Emetqari proceeded to whisper a Quranic verse while pretending to read the detention center rules on the wall. Abduweli followed suit, doing a motionless morning prayer and then furtively reading all the surah that he knew. Emetqari didn’t know the five daily prayer times and was very happy when Abduweli told him, though ultimately Abduweli did not understand the source of his happiness, since it was impossible to tell the time inside their cell anyway. It was only possible to tell apart night and day.
They had to remain seated on their beds, and moving too much would result in a voice from the intercom by the door warning that further movements would result in being chained to the bed.
After some time, a voice ordered them to stand up, with Abduweli again following Emetqari’s lead as they got up and began to sing the national anthem, which Abduweli found twisted and ironic, given how the lyrics started with “Arise, those who do not wish to be slaves!” They were then served breakfast – a bread bun and a bowl of boiled water – through a slot in the door.
During breakfast, Emetqari whispered to Abduweli and asked him when he would be taken to Urumqi. The police had seemed to say the day before that it would be at nine in the morning. Emetqari then proceeded to ask Abduweli to deliver some messages to his elderly mother, wife, and newborn daughter, before taking out a pair of gloves that he had woven for his wife from broom bristles, and asking Abduweli to deliver them if they managed to get through inspection.
However, when the police came for Abduweli soon after, he was forced to change clothes before leaving and the gloves ended up being lost when his prisoner garments were thrown into a black plastic bag. While Emetqari despaired quietly, Abduweli was taken away, unable to look back and say goodbye.
III. TENGRITAGH DETENTION CENTER
After being taken to the Kashgar Airport, he was flown to Urumqi. Handcuffed and with a black hood over his head, he was then put in a car and, as he was able to gather from the chatting of the police officers, taken to the Tengritagh (Tianshan) district branch of the city’s public security bureau. When the hood was removed, he found himself in a room that was about 15 square meters and had a small iron cage in the middle, with a tiger chair inside. Abduweli saw two cameras in the room, which made him think that the police in charge of him were not completely trusted either. A female police officer who was passing through the hall outside remarked that he looked like someone who had “come out of a tomb”.
As had been the case in Kashgar, three officers took part in the interrogation this time, with one taking notes, another asking all the questions, and the third – Muhter Emet, who had been involved in the original arrest in Kashgar – sitting next to them without doing much. Despite the original charge against Abduweli having been financial in nature, none of the questions that he would be asked here had any relation to this. Instead, the police employed carrot-and-stick tactics to interrogate him about his activities and connections abroad, and about the goals of his mother-language initiatives. At the very onset, Muhter warned Abduweli by telling him that he would be locked away for at least 15 years, even if he hadn’t committed any of the crimes they were accusing him of, because of his mother-language initiative actually being a cover for a counter-revolutionary organization and the promotion of the independence cause, with separatism as the goal.

Understanding that they were attempting to force him to confess to a vague crime – such as “separatism“, “illegal gathering“, “subversion of state power“, or “inciting ethnic hatred” – Abduweli kept his answers to a minimum. The questions, he noted, always took the form of “you said or did such-and-such, is that right?”, and he would deny it by saying “no, that’s not true”, without giving any additional explanation. They would constantly beat him, but – he lamented – not on the ears, as the thing he found most difficult to bear were their insults and yelling. At one point, Muhter got angry because of Abduweli’s answers, telling him that the government wasn’t crazy and wouldn’t have arrested him for nothing. They also told him that Abduweli’s business partners had already confessed to everything, and that only he was the stubborn one.
Both Muhter and another interrogator asked him, at different times, to tell them who in America had “sent” him. They claimed that he could get a lighter treatment if he admitted to being a “leader”. There were times when Abduweli was poked with the electric prod, losing consciousness but being reanimated with water being poured over his head.
A number of people took turns interrogating him, including Muhter, An Jinkun, Han Zuwan, and Ekber. The latter, Abduweli noted, spoke a great deal and seemed to use a soft approach as opposed to Muhter’s hard one. An Jinkun seemed like he was there to compare and analyze the two, to see which approach was more effective.
After the interrogation was over, Abduweli was led through three checkpoints, yelling “reporting!” (报告) at each. Again the hood over his head was removed, and he found himself in an office with a low table and three chairs, where he was given a yellow shirt that said “Tianshan Pre-Trial Detention Center” on it. All of his belongings had been taken, and he had been forced to strip to his underwear, with a jail guard now leading him to another office and ordering him to take off the underwear as well. Though worried at first, Abduweli was somewhat put at ease by the fact that there were staff in police uniform constantly coming in and out of the room.

Han Chinese in white coats then registered him and took his photo, as well as his blood, urine, and saliva samples. His fingerprints, toeprints, voice, and eye/skin color would be recorded as well. He was then handcuffed and led through another series of doors, followed by a long corridor lined with cells, where each of the reddish cell doors had what appeared to be a one-way window next to it – with the cell interior visible from the outside but not vice versa. Stopping at Cell 2-2, Abduweli found that the smell coming from inside, while still foul from the sweat, feces, and dirty clothes, was noticeably better than that in the Kashgar detention center (which Abduweli remarks had generally worse overall conditions and treatment by the staff).
Walking into the cell, Abduweli said “reporting!”, but forgot to put his hands behind his head as he entered. This resulted in his being slapped once, then again, by a young and tall Uyghur inmate, who would proceed to shower Abduweli with swears because Abduweli inadvertently glared at him. A Han inmate standing on the raised half of the cell and close to the entrance then ordered him to undress, which Abduweli did with fear and desperation, expecting a repeat of what had happened in Kashgar. However, he was relieved when he realized that the other inmates were all sitting and watching TV – a revolutionary film about the China-Japan war.
The room was long, a little over 20 square meters in size and over three meters tall, with the raised platform having a stack of sleeping mats next to the door – the “throne” of the Han inmate who had given orders to Abduweli. The numbers 1 to 10 were written along the length of the platform, to designate the sleeping spots of the high-rank inmates. A board with cups, towels, and toothbrushes was attached to one of the walls. Unlike in the Kashgar detention center, the top and bottom slots of the entrance door were not shut, making it possible for the inmates to catch glimpses of the corridor.

Opposite the main entrance and on the other side of the cell was the back door, and just next to it the toilet, sectioned off with glass. Leading Abduweli to the toilet area, the tall Uyghur inmate, named Perhat, would proceed to beat him – asking him questions in Chinese and hitting Abduweli when the other didn’t answer in Uyghur, and then asking questions in Uyghur and then hitting him when he didn’t answer in Chinese. He then asked Abduweli if he wanted to “eat samsa”, then “how many”. Abduweli said “five”, prompting Perhat to punch him five times in the stomach.
Perhat asked him if he knew how to “swing”, and slapped him when Abduweli didn’t reply. When Abduweli said “no”, Perhat had two inmates come and tie a towel to his wrists, hanging him up from a ceiling pipe in the toilet, so that Abduweli’s toes could just barely touch the floor, with his wrists and shoulders in great pain. After about an hour, the Han inmate at the entrance, Yang Yong, ordered to have Abduweli freed.
Calling Abduweli over, Yang Yong asked about his situation and seemed surprised by Abduweli’s educational background, going on to ask him about Turkey, America, and other things. He then explained to Abduweli who the other inmates were. Among the 17 of them, four were Han, two Hui, one Kazakh, and the rest Uyghur, with the Han sleeping in the 1 to 4 spots on the raised platform, the Hui in the 5 and 6, and four of the Uyghurs, led by Perhat, in the remaining four spots. The Han were interned for fraud and corruption, the Hui for heroin, the Kazakh for drunk driving, and the Uyghurs for either heroin consumption or political crimes.
Abduweli then had to kneel in front of another Han inmate – the “secretary” – who would proceed to record all of Abduweli’s information and tell him about the cell rules:
- permission to use the toilet was granted only once a day,
- the yellow line by the entrance door was not to be approached,
- speaking to other inmates in Uyghur was punished by an hour of the “swing”,
- because he was a political prisoner, Abduweli had to sleep and eat next to the toilet,
- during sleeping hours, the inmates would take turns guarding one another for two hours, in pairs, with the four Uyghurs and four Han on top exempt, as they had the higher ranks within the cell hierarchy (this was done to prevent people from hurting themselves or others).
At ten o’clock, the inmates lined up in two rows. Yang Yong stood over them on the raised platform, and during this time explained that Abduweli would be under strict surveillance for two weeks, and that he wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, with his time on the “swing” having been a warning for what would happen if he ever broke the rules. The “reception ceremony” for new arrivals had been cancelled, Yang Yong said, and so Abduweli was spared from that.
They were ordered to make their blankets in military style, during which time Abduweli noticed that no one’s prison clothes had pockets. Some of the inmates also had sweaters inside their normal outfits, indicating that they had been there since at least the previous winter.
As the day ended, four of the Uyghur inmates would massage the heads and waists of the four Han inmates until the latter fell asleep, something that Abduweli noted they did in good humor, without giving the impression that they found it forced or demeaning. Because the Han and Hui inmates had wider sleeping places, the remaining four Uyghurs on the platform would be cramped, often grumbling and cursing at each other as they struggled to fall asleep. Abduweli couldn’t understand the logic of the guard duty that was relegated to the low-rank inmates, since the lights were always on, there were three cameras in the room, and the armed police were just outside. They were also supposed to wake up anyone who started snoring.
The typical day in the detention center started at six in the morning, with the song “The 56 Ethnic Groups are One Family”. The same four Uyghurs who did the massage in the evening would rush to fold up the blankets of the high-rank inmates, while the latter took turns using the toilet and washing up. For the low-rank inmates, the toilet would remain off limits until nine in the morning, which is when the window and back door were opened to air out the cell. One of the high-rank inmates, in charge of the hygiene, would manage the amount of toilet paper distributed to each inmate and the order in which they could use the toilet.
As a new arrival, Abduweli had to first learn to fold up his blanket, and was given 15 days to learn how to clean the floor and toilet. It took him less than 30 minutes to learn to fold up the blanket, after which he started learning how to fold up the cleaning rags. Everything needed to be folded into neat rectangles.
They would be fed at seven in the morning, but only after forming two lines and singing a series of Communist songs: “Without the Chinese Communist Party, There Would Be No New China“, “The Red Flag Flutters in the Sky” (红旗飘飘), “Strength in Unity” (团结就是力量), and the national anthem. Abduweli didn’t fully know two of them, and was told that he would need to have them memorized by the end of the day, or else he wouldn’t receive his meal. Of the four high-rank inmates whom Abduweli dubbed “servants”, two were “cooks”, and would distribute the bowls of food – which was served from a bucket through the front door’s bottom slot – to the inmates.

For most of the low-rank inmates, who slept and ate on the floor, breakfast consisted of a bread bun and the typical rice congee, which was of poor quality as the rice and water did not mix. Up on the platform, the four inmates with “positions” and their four “servants” sat together, in a spot that was as far from the toilet as possible, and had salad, chocolate, and eggs to go with their meals.
After breakfast, at eight o’clock, they would form two lines on the lower level and do a roll call. The cell boss would then make everyone recite the detainee regulations, which they had to memorize regardless of whether they knew Chinese or not. The punishment for failing to do so was double night-shift duty (4 hours, instead of 2).
The regulations had both a formal and informal version, with the former consisting of 37 paragraphs, properly typed up and attached to the wall. These included such rights as the detainees being allowed to call their lawyer, to see their relatives, and to live in accordance with their customs. The informal version, consisting of just 11 paragraphs that read like a list of orders and punishments, was written on cardboard and reminded the detainees that they should cooperate during interrogations, should snitch on one another, should not pray, and should not speak Uyghur. Abduweli hypothesized that the formal version was only intended for when inspection groups visited, since the informal was the way that things actually worked.

At 8:30, most of the inmates would sit cross-legged on the raised platform, forming three rows, while the three new inmates sat on the floor, with everyone staring at the back of the neck of the inmate in front of him. They would remain sitting like this until 11:30, without moving, and with anyone who failed to keep still being reprimanded with insults from the intercom next to the door. Only the four head inmates were allowed to climb down to the floor and move around when they wanted to. Among the 11 informal rules was one stating that they needed to sit at attention for 8 hours a day, and to listen carefully to the lessons being administered. These three hours were the morning portion.
Prior to the lessons, they were shown cartoons illustrating the contents, which were essentially propaganda covering “modern culture”, “ethnic unity”, law, Xinjiang’s religious history and ethnic groups, and patriotism.
At noon, they would be given lunch, which was identical to breakfast and followed the same procedures. There was then a nap period of an hour and a half, after which they’d once more fold their blankets in military style, continuing with classes at two in the afternoon. The afternoon lessons would start with teaching gratitude to the motherland, the Party, and Chairman Xi, and would go until seven in the evening.
Sometimes, lunch would consist of a bean soup, with a potato soup for dinner.
The inmates also needed to do regular and loud recitations of their crimes, for everyone to hear. These were done according to the individualized texts prepared by the “secretary”. In Abduweli’s case, the recitation went as follows:
“I am prisoner Abduweli Ayup. Because I committed the crime of false capital contribution, I was arrested by the Tianshan District domestic-security branch team on August 19, 2013. I actively cooperate during interrogations, confess to my crime, completely disclose my accomplices, and am working hard to earn a lenient decision.”
These statements were also in Chinese and had to be memorized within three days, with physical punishment otherwise (Abduweli was able to memorize it on the same day). Additionally, inmates also had to report on their night shifts.
For those Uyghur inmates whose Chinese proficiency was low, both were very difficult, and Abduweli felt particularly bad for them, as even small errors in speech or failure to memorize the pages of rules would result in them being punished. The punishments were both painful and humiliating: deprivation of meals, deprivation of the right to use the toilet, prolonged night shifts, being forced to clean the toilet, having a black hood put over one’s head, or wiping a high-rank inmate’s rear after he used the toilet.
Before long, Abduweli began to further understand how the hierarchy within the cell functioned. Yang Yong, the boss, had an arrangement that allowed him to sneak cigarettes into the cell, which he would smoke while the Kazakh inmate stood in front of the surveillance camera. Perhat would often try to ingratiate himself with Yang Yong so as to be given a whiff, while telling Abduweli in private that he had no choice but to be rough with the Uyghur inmates as a show of loyalty, or else he’d be accused of having ethnic sympathies. As part of the higher ranks, Perhat could treat himself to the “cadre meals”, having such things as fried fish and chicken dishes while the lower ranks made do with the “hardship soup” (an unpleasant watery soup with next to nothing in it) and the bread buns. According to a Hui cellmate, the cell boss would also use the money sent to some of the Uyghur inmates by friends or relatives to pay for the “cadre meals”, with the money never reaching the intended recipients.
Not long after Abduweli’s arrival, Perhat also had him learn how to arrange the inmates’ shoes, for those inmates who had the right to be on the raised platform.
Because two of the Uyghur inmates – both political prisoners – knew no Chinese, Abduweli was ordered by Yang Yong to write out the lyrics of the revolutionary red songs they had to sing before meals, writing them in Uyghur to approximate the Chinese pronunciation. Abduweli was happy to do this, as it took him the entire second day and let him escape from the general routine.
Following the roll call on the morning of the third day, Abduweli was called over by an Uyghur guard who had been observing him from outside the cell. The guard asked Abduweli if he was “Mr. Gulen” (“Gulen Ependi”), laughed, and then walked off before Abduweli could regain his composure. “Mr. Gulen” was an online handle that he had used back before the government started watching him more carefully.
This episode raised Abduweli’s status in the eyes of the other inmates, turning him into someone who looked like he had acquaintances among the guards and thereby sparing him from future physical punishments.
It also spared him from the “inmate drills”, another military-style procedure in which the inmates were taught how to act in various scenarios: when the guards came to the front of the cell, when going to an interrogation, during cell inspections, during inspections by the superintendent, when the doctor came for the daily check and gave them pills, during drills in the detention center, when the soldiers patrolled in the hallway above, when higher officials visited… When called for an interrogation, inmates had to put their hands behind their heads, go to the yellow line that was drawn a half meter in front of the cell entrance, stand straight, and say “reporting!” As the “secretary” had explained, they were not allowed to cross that line otherwise.
The drills also included mock interrogations, with the cell boss playing the role of interrogator, the high-rank inmates playing the roles of guards, and the rest being interrogated. While their nominal role was to teach the inmates how to conduct themselves in interrogations, these drills could often be worse than the real thing, as any information that the cell boss succeeded in obtaining could be passed to the police, thereby not only saving them the time and effort but also earning the cell boss certain perks. More often than not, the cell bosses were criminals with particularly serious cases, and their long time in detention frequently led to them becoming informal assistants to the police, enjoying many privileges that the others could not and even being able to leave the cell from time to time.
Following the “Mr. Gulen” episode, Abduweli also found himself “promoted” to a sort of scribe and translator. When Yang Yong did his own interrogations of the new inmates, Abduweli was often asked to help translate and to write down the interrogation records. If Yang Yong found anything in their answers that was even slightly suspicious, he would have Perhat punish them. Now and then, Abduweli would sneak in a few sentences when translating for the Uyghur inmates, whom he normally couldn’t speak Uyghur to, in the hopes of easing their burden (if only slightly).
Abduweli also ended up writing many post-lesson summary reports, not only for himself but also for those who either didn’t know Chinese or weren’t literate in it, which included Perhat (who spoke Chinese fluently but couldn’t write it). Abduweli enjoyed these opportunities, as they at least gave him something to do, and would put extra time and effort into the work so as to drag out the time.
On the first Friday afternoon after his arrival at the Tianshan detention center, one of Abduweli’s interrogators came to the cell and gave him a paper to sign, which said that the initial seven-day detention that Abduweli had “agreed” to would now be extended to thirty. Abduweli complained, but was yelled at and told to sign.
That evening, Yang Yong held a meeting and announced that they would be carrying out inmate drills in full force from then on, as theirs was a “training cell”. Such cells, also called “breaking-in cells”, numbered one for every seven at the Tianshan detention center, and were intended specifically for breaking in new inmates for the first week or so, with their appointed bosses being particularly rough – frequently, these were repeat offenders, murderers, or people sentenced to life.
Later that night, during Abduweli’s night shift, the guard brought in a new inmate – a young Uyghur around twenty, from Aksu’s Awat County, who had been arrested and charged with “endangering state security” for studying at a private mosque in Urumqi. Yang Yong told him to sleep first, and Abduweli took him to the back of the room, to a spot close to the back door, through which some outside air could get in.
The next day was a day of rest, with none of the regular routine or disciplinary obligations in force. The inmates were also allowed to “air out”, stepping out into the small rectangular space – about ten square meters in size – that was on the other side of the back door, where they could see the polluted Urumqi sky through the netted rectangular cover above them. Despite it still feeling like a cage, the fresh air brought Abduweli great relief after days of being shut inside the cell. Without anyone ordering him to do so, he took to cleaning the airing-out space, and – following permission from Yang Yong – brought out the cell’s rags and towels, leaving them there to air out and dry.

Yang Yong then ordered them to start the inmate drills, which resulted in Perhat bringing the new young inmate to the center and abusing him. As the new Uyghur inmate spoke no Chinese (and could not read Uyghur either), Perhat would give him orders in Chinese and then punish him when he didn’t act accordingly, hitting him with the food bucket. As additional punishment, the young man was made to stand facing the wall from morning to night, deprived not only of food and drink but also of the right to use the toilet.
That night, Abduweli requested that he be allowed to have his night shift with the new arrival, in the hopes that he could use this chance to have the other drink something and use the toilet. However, during the shift the man collapsed, with Abduweli asking Yang Yong to immediately get him water. Instead, what Yang Yong gave him was the spittoon he used while smoking. The young man drank the contents without realizing what he was drinking and, curling up, fell asleep.
Commenting on it, Yang Yong said:
“When I was little, I would see Uyghurs standing outside a mosque, holding food, water, and fruit. I heard that people who came out after prayer would spit in their bowls and they’d still take it home and eat it. From what I heard, they thought that the spittle of those who came out from prayers was beneficial and could cure illness. After I grew up, I asked other Uyghurs, and they also said that this was a kind of medicine. So you see? My spittle is also going to help this guy’s fever. Maybe it’ll even be two birds in one stone, and he’ll pick up Chinese as well!”
Abduweli couldn’t look at Yang Yong after he heard this, forcing himself to conceal his anger.
The young inmate still had a fever when he woke up the next morning, but Yang Yong – either out of pity or fear that he be held responsible should something happen – removed the punitive limitations, allowing the other to lie down, to take in food and water, and to use the toilet. Leaving the new inmate alone, Yang Yong decided to instead turn his attention to the two political prisoners in the cell.
Because some inmates were allowed to dress normally on weekends, Yang Yong and the more privileged inmates changed into street clothes, with Yang ordering the two political prisoners to wash his and others’ shoes, despite the shoes not being dirty. Afterwards, he ordered them to wash their clothes as well, including socks and undergarments, which was so humiliating that the younger of the two pleaded with Perhat that he alone be allowed to wash them – the older inmate was weak and over sixty, and it would be unseemly for an elderly person to wash the inner garments of someone young enough to be his son. Perhat shook his head, however.
At this point, Yang asked Perhat to put on a “movie”, which resulted in Perhat giving the two political prisoners orders they didn’t understand – not knowing Chinese – and then being slapped or kicked as a result. Then they were made to say the names of the Han and Hui prisoners, which they did incorrectly, with pronunciations that the others found funny, and were punished as a result, being made to drink glasses of water whenever they made mistakes – something particularly harmful since political prisoners were only allowed to use the toilet once a day.
Having gotten bored of this, Yang called Abduweli over and started talking to him about America, suggesting that Abduweli teach Perhat English so that the latter could give orders to the inmates in three languages next time, resulting in even more “fun”. Perhat was also open to the idea, and so Abduweli started teaching him, which gave them more opportunities to chat in Uyghur.
One of the first things that Abduweli taught him were the lyrics to Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us“. While learning them, Perhat asked if Abduweli had faithfully translated the lyrics from English or if he just made them up, because the song sounded like it was written about the July 5 incident. Perhat would then tell Abduweli that his younger brother – a talented student – had disappeared then, with their parents searching hospitals and police stations for six months before learning that he had been given a seven-year sentence. Perhat broke into tears talking about it.
Throughout his detention, Abduweli was struck by the absurdity and hypocrisy of the environment he was in, and the euphemisms that came with it. The cell was referred to as a “classroom”, the head of the cell – a drug addict – as the “study director”, and the guards as “trainers”. Formally, the inmates were “people in custody”, but in practice had to refer to themselves as “criminals”. The rules that they had to memorize were full of such rights as being able to see one’s lawyer before the first interrogation and to not answer questions otherwise, being able to see one’s family, being entitled to proper food, sleep, and fresh air, and being able to lodge complaints at any time if such rights were violated. The reality, however, was the opposite.

After exactly a week at the detention center, Abduweli was called for an interrogation, with the prison guard dropping a pair of handcuffs through the bottom slot in the cell door and Perhat putting them on Abduweli. Hardened by the week of detention-center life, Abduweli accepted them like he would a pair of gloves, without giving it much thought. Walking down the hallway, he and the guard stopped at a room nearby, where Abduweli saw a large screen showing the feeds from all of the surveillance cameras, with audio. Included were the ones in his cell, which made him realize that the police had watched all of the abuse he had received on the first day. Their cell was in the No. 6 Block, which, together with the other five blocks, had 10 cells on each side, facing each other (for a total of 120 cells with an estimated 1800 detainees).

Following a number of turns and corridors, with multiple points where Abduweli had to shout “reporting!”, he finally found himself in the interrogation room, where An Jinkun and two Uyghur policemen whom he hadn’t seen before were waiting for him. This room was essentially identical to the interrogation room from before, with a cage in the middle and a tiger chair inside. The only differences were that the chair’s armrest-table was made of wood and not of metal and that there weren’t any handcuffs hanging from above, making Abduweli realize that they wouldn’t beat him after hanging him up, as had been the case in the previous interrogation.
After the standard procedures of asking Abduweli his name and other basic information, one of the two Uyghur policemen asked him if he knew what his crime was. Abduweli said that he hadn’t committed any crime, only that there were certain things that they considered a crime that needed to be cleared up, after which he would be let go. The policeman yelled at him, asking if they really didn’t have anything better to do than to detain people for no reason, and so what was Abduweli, if not a criminal? Abduweli replied by saying that their own rules, hanging on the wall of the cell, said that he was not a “criminal” (罪犯) but a “person in custody” (在押人员). Furthermore, he was not a criminal in accordance with the law, since they first needed to send the facts of the crime to the procuratorate, who would then decide if these were sufficient to make him a “criminal suspect” (犯罪嫌疑人) and warrant formal arrest (逮捕), after which the procuratorate would need to examine the facts and send the indictment to the court, where Abduweli would have a trial and a lawyer, and would only become a criminal if the court found him guilty. He then pointed out that he had been detained on the charge of “false capital contribution”, but that none of the interrogations so far had even touched on this supposed issue, and that the funds he used to start a company was money that he had earned with his own hard work.
In reply, An Jinkun let out a sudden “No!”, startling the other Uyghur policeman.
An then countered by telling Abduweli that one of his business partners, Dilyar, had been a leader of a demonstration by Uyghur students in Xi’an in 2001, while his other partner – the company’s executive director, Memetsidiq – had “secret” photos of the July 5 incident on his computer. Additionally, another company employee had been previously detained for political reasons, while a Kazakh supporter named Duman, from the social sciences academy, had previously spent two years in prison for incitement (of ethnic hatred). According to An, this was evidence that Abduweli’s company was only a front for a separatist organization. It was a “fourth force” that was more dangerous than the “three evil forces” of separatism, terrorism, and religious extremism, as it relied on soft power.

Although Abduweli knew that Dilyar had been involved in an Uyghur protest in Xi’an in 2001, he didn’t know the details and wasn’t that aware of the other cases (and wouldn’t have admitted to it even if he had been). He replied by saying that he ran a universal company that dealt in clothes, food, and technical and educational services, and that there was no legal obligation for him to check the criminal backgrounds of his partners and employees. Had the police warned him in advance, he said, he wouldn’t have partnered with them. In the back of his mind, what Abduweli was most worried about were his literary writings, which could be interpreted very loosely as “inciting ethnic hatred” or “inciting subversion”.
An Jinkun then asked Abduweli about a talk he gave at the No. 2 Middle School in Atush in 2013, which had resulted in the students staging a protest a few days later, showing up to school in headscarves and doppas. This had been prompted, inadvertently, by a girl in the audience asking Abduweli why they weren’t allowed to dress in Uyghur style in school, to which Abduweli had answered that there was nothing in the law, on any level, that prohibited them from doing so. An Jinkun demanded to know whom at the school Abduweli was in contact with and who had invited him, but Abduweli replied by saying that his talk was unplanned and last-minute. He had come to the school on business, since their company also sold study materials to various schools in the region.
An replied derisively, taking out a number of photos for Abduweli to look at, while telling him that they had been recording all of his communications ever since he had returned from the US and got a local China Mobile SIM card. An told him that they already knew everything and that there was no point in Abduweli trying to protect anyone or making things difficult, and thereby risking getting a life sentence. All he needed to do was confess and receive a lenient sentence.
However, Abduweli didn’t recognize most of the people in the photos – perhaps because he often forgot such things – and did not believe that they had actually recorded his conversations, as they didn’t ask him about the planned meeting he had with the Canadian political officer at the Canadian mission in China. If they had really recorded everything, then this should have been their first question, leading Abduweli to conclude that they were bluffing.
An then proceeded to try and further convince Abduweli to confess, saying that the students present at his talk had already told them everything, and that they (the police) knew about Abduweli saying that the Uyghurs were the “rightful rulers of this land”, with “the doppa their crown” and “the headscarf their flag”, which were the words that had brought about the student protest. All Abduweli had to do, An stated, was to confess that he had said this and promise that he wouldn’t do it again. Otherwise, he’d just be thrown in jail and forgotten. From this, Abduweli understood that they hadn’t even heard the contents of his talk, and were just trying to dump a general accusation on him, by labeling him as a “separatist”.
At noon, they went to lunch and left Abduweli in the tiger chair, which he found preferable to returning to the cell. The interrogation room was clean, and the police also allowed him to use the bathroom and wash up a number of times, which would have been a luxury in the cell. Their threats and slaps were also preferable to the humiliation that he would have endured back there. On the whole, this particular interrogation lasted over ten hours and went until nine in the evening.
Afterwards, he would be subjected to what his Han cellmates called an “unprecedented” interrogation schedule. Every day, Abduweli would be taken out of the cell at nine or ten, be allowed to return for thirty minutes at noon for lunch, and then be taken back to interrogation until after ten at night, although there were also days when it would go until one or two in the morning.
Often, his cellmates would treat Abduweli as a walking cigarette, consuming the smell of smoke that was left on his clothes from the interrogation room as a means to satisfy their addiction. Once, feeling sorry for Perhat after having watched the other ingratiate himself so much to Yang Yong just to be allowed to smoke a little, Abduweli managed to sneak back a cigarette in his glasses case, giving it to Perhat when he returned to the cell. Surprised, Perhat asked why he had done so voluntarily, to which Abduweli said that – while he wished for Perhat to drop his smoking habits and stop abusing Uyghur cellmates just to please Yang – he also hated watching the lengths Perhat went to, and so just brought him a cigarette himself.
It wouldn’t be long before Perhat smoked it, livening up afterwards. In the days and weeks that followed, Abduweli actually noticed a change in his attitude. Perhat no longer abusively yelled at new inmates, and allowed them to memorize the cell rules in Uyghur. On top of that, he even altered one of them, scribbling in the word “ablution-free” before “praying is forbidden” and letting the Uyghur inmates memorize and recite that instead, which Abduweli saw as an ingenious way of helping them preserve some of their dignity while saving them from the punishment for refusing to recite the original version.
On one Saturday afternoon, they received an inmate named Muhemmet, originally from Mekit County but living in Urumqi, where he worked for a gas company, delivering gas canisters on a three-wheeler. Unlike the political prisoners, who had to wear yellow jackets, Muhemmet’s was orange, suggesting that he had been arrested by national security (国安) and not by just the domestic-security brigade (国保大队). He did not speak any Chinese, which would bring him endless trouble.
At first, Abduweli was grateful that Muhemmet arrived on Saturday, when everyone was off, with Yang Yong playing Chinese chess in the outdoor area and there being no apparent initiation process as there had been with Abduweli. Muhemmet started by talking to the “secretary”, with Abduweli translating, during which time Abduweli noticed that Muhemmet seemed to be in a state of fear and disarray – he couldn’t properly answer all the questions and wasn’t able to learn the cell rules that Abduweli taught him. Perhat put him through the “inmate drills”, but Muhemmet could not pass as he spoke no Chinese.
When Yang Yong returned inside, however, he set about to “initiating” and abusing Muhemmet. After kicking him and spitting on him, he publicly declared that “people with crooked eyes” like Muhemmet could only be bad people, and that it was this kind of “uneducated south Xinjianger” who had created chaos on July 5, flipping over buses and setting stores on fire. Yang then called him an “enemy of the state”, and said that everything was permissible when it came to him, and that there was no need to “initiate” him in the toilet – they could do it in the open, right there. He led him out into the outdoor area, stood him against the wall for thirty minutes, and then came back to hit him on the ear, after which all the senior inmates gathered around Muhemmet and started beating him.
Later, during a count-off at the end of the day, the number counted off by the inmates came out less than the actual because of Muhemmet failing to count off, prompting the guard who was observing from outside the cell to ask them to do another round. Muhemmet also failed to count off the second time, which resulted in his being kicked and looking at Abduweli in confusion. Abduweli spoke up to explain that Muhemmet didn’t know Chinese and couldn’t do the count, but if they gave Abduweli some pen and paper he could teach him. Yang Yong replied by telling Abduweli to stay out of it, and not to think of himself as some teacher just because Yang had asked him to teach Perhat English, before stating that “animals” like Muhemmet were not to be taught the “national language” with pen and paper, but with fists and feet.
Not long after, Abduweli heard his number called by a guard outside, and would be transferred, to Cell No. 5 in the No. 6 Block.
Once in the new cell, he immediately understood why cell transfers were so feared by inmates: with his reputation and acquaintances reduced to zero, he had to go through the initiation steps and all the hardships that came with them all over again.
A short inmate named Abdurahman would beat him as part of his initiation here, the same way that Perhat had in the previous cell. The boss of this cell, named Wang, was tall, spoke Chinese with a Hui accent, and had a number of books lying around his allocated space. Not one to talk much, Wang let most of his commands be carried out by the cell’s Number Two – a Han from Gansu. Here, the written cell rules were annotated with the names of those who had violated them. Unlike in the previous cell, not all blankets needed to be folded into rectangles as part of their daily routine, since some of them were newer and harder to fold, with inmates allowed to spread them directly on the raised platform.
Abduweli’s impression of Wang as someone who was better educated and learned was ruined that Sunday morning, when Wang ordered Abduweli to clean the toilet with an old toothbrush. After Abduweli was done, Wang asked him why it had taken so long, asking if Abduweli had never cleaned a toilet before. Abduweli replied with a “yes!”, and was promptly punished by being forced to stand facing the wall. Such punishments seemed to be arbitrary, with Abduweli noting that there was no rhyme or reason to how one answered yes/no questions and what happened afterwards. Facing the wall, he would read the various things scribbled on it hundreds of times over. Among these, he noticed the names “Dilmurat, Menzire” written in many places, from which he guessed that Menzire must have been the love whom an inmate named Dilmurat missed.
Abduweli was not relieved from his standing for either lunch or dinner, with Wang not having told him how long he’d have to stand like that. As his stomach started to growl from the hunger, he ignored the risk of being beaten and asked for permission to eat, to which Wang replied by calling the “chef” – a high-rank inmate who brought him two hard bread buns and a bowl of boiled water. Sitting down in front of the toilet, Abduweli started eating, grateful that this particular toilet didn’t stink as much as the others. Wang, seeming to have caught on to Abduweli’s thoughts, spoke to him and said that the design here was similar to the ones he had encountered at other detention centers, with the toilets set up above pits that had been dug out internally, without any connection to the exterior. The reason for this, according to Wang, was that centralized sewage systems could make it possible for prisoners to escape or exchange messages, which reminded Abduweli of a scene from the American show “Prison Break“.
On September 1, Abduweli had another interrogation, during which he was asked about how to translate the Uyghur words helipe (“caliph”) and zemin (“land”) in the sentence “Allah created us to be the caliphs of this land”. He recognized it as taken from a speech he had given in Hotan that May, while promoting his mother-language kindergarten project there, as they also planned to open a branch in Hotan. Despite the sentence very clearly referring to the Uyghurs as being the true owners of the region, Abduweli translated the words into Chinese as “representative” and “planet”. During this time, the police officers complained about a lot of new police arrivals either being Han who had learned Uyghur as a second language or Uyghurs who had studied in Chinese schools, both with imperfect knowledge of Uyghur. While Abduweli took advantage of the opportunity to say that this is why mother-language education was important, he nevertheless grew worried that further interrogation would focus on that phrase specifically, with him being accused of separatism and inciting subversion, and with the risk of much more dire consequences.
In line with his expectations, interrogations from the next day onward shifted the focus to Abduweli’s speech in Hotan, though with emphasis on who organized the event, who attended, what Abduweli talked about, and why. While the speech had started on a religious note (to better accommodate the relatively pious Hotaners), the main topic was centered around the current issues with kindergarten education.
Still worried and afraid, Abduweli was allowed to return to his cell, where he had the standard inmate’s lunch and then went back for the afternoon interrogation. This one took place in a different room, with a window, which revitalized him slightly. Looking at the wooden board that acted to support one’s arms in the tiger chair, he saw the Arabic words la tahzen (“grieve not”), which provided him with a certain religious inspiration and allowed him to regain his composure for the interrogation that day. To his relief, this interrogation went by relatively quickly, and without the interrogators asking him about the sensitive phrase.

Life in his new cell continued to prove difficult, as Abduweli struggled to adapt to the rules and would often be beaten or punished. In one such case, the inmate sitting next to him was mute and skipped his count during the evening count-off, prompting Abduweli to continue the count in his place and be slapped by Abdurahman, who rebuked Abduweli and told him that this inmate, Dilmurat, was mute.
In the days that followed, Dilmurat would take to teaching Abduweli how to carry out the various cleaning and tidying tasks, something that Dilmurat did quietly and very well, with Wang referring to him as a “model prisoner”. Once, while Dilmurat was showing Abduweli how to wipe the walls, Abduweli asked him if the “Dilmurat and Menzire” writing on the walls was his, and Dilmurat nodded (surprising Abduweli, who had assumed that Dilmurat was also deaf). Menzire was Dilmurat’s girlfriend. When Abduweli asked if he missed her, Dilmurat broke into tears.
During the next evening count-off, Abduweli would be kicked for failing to notice the prisoner next to him, who was curled up in handcuffs and fetters. On the third day, there was no count-off, but there would be one on the morning of the fourth, during which Abduweli once more failed to count properly – panicked and anxious, he ended up taking the turn of the inmate next to him once more. This time, Wang had him punished by ordering Abduweli to take off his pants, with two inmates twisting his hands behind his back when he tried to shield his front and rear, and then hitting his buttocks with a shoe, which made him involuntarily urinate in his underwear. Afterwards, there was a scream from Dilmurat, who threw himself on Abduweli to shield him, prompting the beating to stop.
(A year later, while at the detention center in Urumqi’s Midong District, Abduweli would run into someone who looked just like Dilmurat, and who turned out to be Dilmurat’s father. Dilmurat’s mother, as Abduweli would learn, had died during childbirth, with the father scraping together gifts and money to get Dilmurat into a Chinese school. However, because Dilmurat didn’t speak any Chinese and couldn’t do the homework, he would often be punished by the teacher. At first, the punishments meant having his hands hit with a ruler, but once, having gotten angry, the teacher asked Dilmurat why he didn’t talk and pulled his tongue so hard that the six-year-old Dilmurat screamed and fell to the ground. After this incident, he would never talk again, despite his father taking him to countless doctors and witch-doctors.)
Eventually, as with the first cell, Abduweli was tasked with translating for Uyghur inmates and helping write down their bios. In doing this, he realized that the Uyghur inmates were essentially all there for only two reasons: privately studying the Quran (the political/religious prisoners) or dealing drugs (usually heroin). The religious prisoners were typically very young, honest, and virtuous, and would receive money, clothing, and letters from their families – if these weren’t intercepted – with the family also hiring a lawyer for the trial (even if they knew that it was largely useless). The heroin prisoners were their polar opposite: actual criminals with complicated histories, whose relatives didn’t bother sending them anything or even going to the trial. For these, the sufferings in the detention center were largely limited to their addictions and did not compare to those of the religious prisoners, who were abused not only in the cell but also during the interrogations outside it.
For the heroin dealers, the detention center was also an opportunity – a sort of “office” where they could make new contacts and plan new drug operations for after release. The big drug dealers were typically Han from Sichuan and Yunnan, Abduweli noted, while the Hui worked as their accomplices and the Uyghurs did small-scale sales. There was essentially no telling them apart when they all sat together and chatted, with Abduweli finding it comical that their drug trade had helped them attain “ethnic unity“. If only the guards saw this, he thought, then they might decide the several hours of daily “ethnic unity” indoctrination to be completely unnecessary.
One day, Abduweli saw Abdurahman doing a spirited recitation of the Quran, something that Abduweli found very difficult to reconcile with Abdurahman being interned for selling individual rolls to Uyghurs in the Tianshan District. As it turned out, Abdurahman was also a qari (someone who could recite the Quran). Unable to bear it, Abduweli lost his temper and reprimanded him, asking him how he could be a qari and yet not fear Allah, engaging in haram behavior and destroying people’s lives with heroin. Instead of beating Abduweli or using the intercom to report him, Abdurahman seemed upset, and motioned for the other to join him in the outdoor area, as two Uyghurs talking inside the cell could be seen as suspicious.
Once they were both there, Abdurahman told him that Abduweli didn’t understand – it was heroin that “saved” him, not the Quran. Having become a qari at the age of sixteen, Abdurahman would see his teacher locked away and would himself be detained for three days. Once released, he was subjected to profiling and close monitoring, with the police continuing to follow him even after his father got him involved in a craft and got him a small booth to work from. According to Abdurahman, it was only once news of his becoming a heroin dealer had spread that the harassment stopped, with police not caring about him anymore, even as Abdurahman’s own parents asked them to arrest him. Despite the frequent detentions, he would never be sentenced and, in this strange way, was essentially able to live in peace.
Occasionally, Abduweli was also asked to translate during the questioning sessions that the prison guards conducted for the new inmates, calling them in once a week. Once, during the questioning of a heroin detainee, the guard turned to Abduweli and told him that there were two things destroying the Uyghurs: drugs and religion, with religion being no different than drugs in essence and much worse in its impact, especially since people refused to believe that they had a destructive habit and even wanted to spread it to others. Abduweli took such remarks as a test: agreeing and saying “yes” would amount to destroying his spirit, while saying “no” would mean breaking detention-center regulations. Because not reacting at all was dangerous too, Abduweli responded by breaking into an aggressive cough and covering his mouth with his handcuffed hand.
Following the questioning of the drug user, Abduweli also had to assist with the questioning of an Uyghur from Qarasheher (Yanqi) County, detained for reading, possessing, and sharing an “illegal” religious book. As the questioning started, Abduweli noticed the guard’s expression become much sterner. The inmate said, to Abduweli’s hidden delight, that he didn’t know the book was illegal, with Abduweli enriching the answer in his translation to make it sound even more suitable. Looking at both of them, the guard then asked the inmate who was greater: God or the Party?
Without any hesitation, the inmate replied that it was God, which prompted the guard to splash his tea on the inmate’s face and to start yelling at him, before writing down something in the interrogation records. In Abduweli’s experience, it was common for guards to provoke the inmates, in addition to tricking them with promises of release or rewards, since their goal was to “crack” as many cases as possible (something that was directly correlated to promotions and their career ladders).
The evening after the questioning session, the inmate from Qarasheher would be taken back to his hometown, struggling to stand up even after his handcuffs and fetters were removed, and ultimately having to crawl out of the cell. In the days prior, Abduweli had to squeeze out the pus from the infected wounds caused by the ankle fetters, which were left untreated, with the inmate not given any medication.
The hierarchical structure in the second cell was similar to that of the first, with the cell boss, the deputy boss, the “secretary”, the “interrogator”, the “cleaning monitor”, and two “chefs” forming the higher ranks (whom Abduweli referred to as “officials”). Here, the boss was charged with managing and supervising the daily activities, which typically consisted of waking up at five (Xinjiang time), doing the prisoner drills at six-thirty (after breakfast), sitting at attention between 8 and noon, and then again between 2 and 5, followed by a half hour of political news, and then watching the central TV station propaganda until lights out at ten, in addition to writing reflections on the day’s lessons. Everything was regulated to the minute detail, with explicit permission required for most actions.
As a rule, however, the “officials” were exempt from the night guard duty and cleaning, and would enjoy the more privileged spots – far away from the toilet and close to the door, where the breeze from outside the cell usually entered. They would also eat the privileged “cadre meals”, ordered by the “secretary” with the money intended for the political-prisoner cellmates (the bottom ranks of the hierarchy). The secretary was the third in charge, and also arranged the daytime and nighttime guard duties, in addition to keeping the relevant records.
Food distribution was closely managed by the cell boss, with the “chefs” who distributed the food also responsible for preparing the water, basin, and towel for the boss to wash up with in the morning. That the boss’s towel, glass, and shoes were kept clean, in addition to his tea, clean socks, and clean sheets always being ready, was assured by the “cleaning monitor”, who was also responsible for organizing the daily cell cleaning, the major weekly cleaning, and the cleaning of the halls, in addition to keeping the cell rags, towels, glasses, bowls, and shoes in order. It was also the cleaning monitor who oversaw the various punishments that were administered for violating cell regulations: washing the high-rank inmates’ underwear, giving them massages, brushing the toilet, doing double guard duty, being punched or kicked, cleaning the high-rank inmates’ buttocks and disposing of their feces, being hung up in the toilet, being forbidden from using the toilet, from eating, or from sleeping, being hooded with a black bag, and being subjected to group beatings, among others.
The “interrogator” was an inmate who was assigned to interrogate new inmates and to find out incriminating details about old ones that the police had not been able to. He would also have an accomplice: an inmate whose job was to be on good terms with everyone and to befriend all the inmates in the cell, so as to get their secrets and report them (a role that Abduweli hadn’t noticed in the first cell).
Because of the numerous rules and punishments, it was common for the inmates to be punished, though new Uyghur inmates typically had it the worst, as a result of them being more likely to make mistakes. In general, this system created an atmosphere where everyone was constantly self-conscious and on edge, afraid that they could do something “wrong” at any moment.
As a general principle, it was the heroin dealers and addicts who ended up as the high-rank “officials”, while the religious and political prisoners ended up as the low-rank “regular folk”, with the former typically “punishing” the latter. Whenever major beatings took place, the police entered but only because regulations required it. When there were disputes, it would typically be the low-rank inmates who were deemed “guilty”, with such simple accusations as “he spoke Uyghur” being sufficient to establish this.
On September 3, 2013, the cell received a new inmate who had been detained for transferring three thousand dollars to Thailand, after spending the previous few years working as a nan baker in inner China. The cell boss decided to interrogate him himself, and asked where he had been during the July 5 incident. The inmate replied that he had been in Urumqi, in Dongkowruk. As soon as Abduweli translated this, there was a command to beat the inmate, and he was beaten until his face was bloody.
A guard showed up, prompting the inmates who were doing the beating to immediately stand at attention and greet the guard, with the cell boss reporting that they had beaten the inmate because he prayed. The guard then berated Abduweli, asking him why he hadn’t translated the cell rules to the new arrival. Abduweli said that the rules had been explained, after which the new inmate was handcuffed and fettered, with the two sets of restraints being connected by a chain.
That evening, the inmate was served the “hardship soup” with a rock-hard bun, but wouldn’t eat it, possibly because he didn’t want to or because he didn’t know how to eat while covered in restraints. This worried Abduweli, as the guards paid particular attention to an inmate’s attitude on the first day, and not eating was automatically interpreted as a hunger strike, forbidden by the rules.
Barely managing to get permission from the cell boss, Abduweli went to the inmate and explained to him that it was dangerous not to eat, while offering him the soup in what was a very dirty plastic bowl. To his shock, the inmate spit in the soup and rebuked Abduweli, asking him what he had translated to make the “infidels” beat him so unfairly and accusing him of being a bad Muslim. Bewildered, Abduweli wanted to explain away the misunderstanding but could not, as speaking Uyghur without permission was forbidden. Thankfully, everyone was busy watching the television and hadn’t heard their exchange or seen the other spit in the soup, which would have certainly led to countless punishments.
A few days later, Abduweli was told by the interrogators that he might be released, and on September 10 would indeed find himself summoned, being asked to change to his regular clothes and being allowed to walk out of the cell without restraints. However, as he reached the surveillance room, two police officers came out and handcuffed him, put a black hood over his head, and ordered him to walk. Soon, Abduweli found himself in another car, where he remembers the driver listening to an Uyghur song that went “you only live once, so if you can bear it, live!”
IV. LIUDAOWAN DETENTION CENTER
They arrived at another detention center, with Abduweli being led past more checkpoints, at which he had to yell “reporting!”. When the hood was finally removed, he found himself in a tiny and unfurnished office, where he would once again have to go through the same humiliating data-collection procedures as in the previous detention center: being photographed, made to undress, made to walk from side to side, made to bend over, and made to jump up and down. There were very few Uyghur guards this time, however. His glasses were taken away by one of the officers, Ge Qiang, making it difficult for him to see clearly.

After the inspection, he went into a second office and received a yellow detainee uniform with the words “Liudaowan Pre-Trial Detention Center” (六道湾看守所) and the number 751 – which worried him, as he feared this number could elicit associations with the July 5 clashes.
He was then taken to Cell 1-2, which was essentially identical to the ones in the Tianshan detention center, with only the doors and windows being a different color. The general regimen was also the same, with the only difference being that here everyone washed their bowls individually after eating. All of the inmates were Han Chinese, and started saying “wei’an” (危安, “endangering (state) security”) to each other once Abduweli entered. Although he wasn’t greeted with a beating, they still made him strip naked and go to the toilet area, where he was showered with buckets of cold water.
At around four that afternoon, the cell boss, Zhang Jun, held a meeting, during which he announced that they had a new cellmate (Abduweli), and that this cellmate was a very dangerous person and an enemy of the country. Because of that, he said, they should not talk to him. He also added that all the unpleasant tasks, like washing the boss’s underwear and cleaning the toilet, would go to Abduweli now.
After dinner, they put Abduweli through the “reception ceremony” – the one that had been cancelled at the previous detention center but still existed here. One after another, the inmates all urinated in a black bag, which was then put over Abduweli’s head. Later that evening, after everyone had taken their turn using the toilet, he was ordered to clean out the feces by dumping water on top, and would be reprimanded and kicked for taking the wrong tub to do so (having taken the tub that was used for washing the cell boss’s underwear).
The next morning, they woke up to the song “The 56 Ethnic Groups are 56 Flowers”, rushing to fold up their sheets while Zhang Jun slowly got up and was served his toothbrush, toothpaste, hot water bottle, toilet paper, and towel, with another cellmate preparing his shoes. When using the toilet, he made a huge stink, but none of the cellmates dared pinch their noses. A general cleaning of the cell came afterwards, after which everyone would sit cross-legged on the raised platform.
Breakfast was served at seven and consisted of porridge, the smell of which Abduweli could pick up while it was still in the hall, and which brought back many childhood memories. This had been one of his favorite foods growing up, and he would often throw in an extra piece of firewood while his mother was cooking so that the bottom burned just a little, resulting in the pleasant smell. However, the way that it was prepared for serving by the cellmates ruined it for him. Mixing it with the popular chemically fortified milk, whose period of validity lasted months and which Abduweli knew to be harmful, they then added sugar, resulting in a sweet yellow liquid that Abduweli had to force himself to drink. A pack of cigarettes was also passed to Zhang Jun from the outside.
At eight in the morning, everyone again assembled on the raised platform and sat cross-legged in rows. Unlike in the previous detention center, where this time was used to assign the night-guard duties for the following evening, here they would use it to announce their “crimes”. The only one not seated on the platform, Abduweli was tasked with arranging everyone’s shoes, which some of the inmates made difficult for him, by asking him to bring theirs over or by going to use the toilet, which ruined the order. (The task was already difficult for Abduweli as he didn’t have his glasses.)
An hour later, the detention center guards and staff – which included Ge Qiang, an Uyghur police officer, and the director of the detention center – came to do a cell inspection, prompting everyone to line up in the outdoor area.

After the inspection was over, Ge Qiang asked Zhang Jun how Abduweli was getting along, prompting the Uyghur officer to ask who Abduweli was. When Ge Qiang told him that he was a teacher and researcher who was involved in a case with two others who had studied at famous universities, the detention center director spoke up and asked Abduweli where he worked, and was surprised when Abduweli said that he had taught in Lanzhou for six years, as the director was allegedly from Wuwei, also in Gansu. Abduweli also mentioned researching ancient Uyghur language and literature, as well as old Uyghur manuscripts preserved in Dunhuang.
After they left, Zhang Jun would yell at Abduweli, reprimanding him for not saying “reporting!” and “reporting finished!” when talking to the staff and the director. It was by doing things like that that Abduweli could go up in rank, Zhang said, but now would make Abduweli water out the toilet for two weeks instead of one as punishment.
However, not long after, Zhang and the others would be shocked when the Uyghur policeman from earlier came back and called Abduweli by name, returning Abduweli’s glasses through the slot in the door. This elicited amazement among the cellmates, who interpreted it to be a sign that the director had taken a liking to Abduweli and that Abduweli must have known the Uyghur policeman, despite Abduweli denying all this. Smiling, Abduweli was just happy to have his glasses back.
On September 11, the interrogations continued, but with the same content as before, trying to frame Abduweli as an agent who had been sent from the US. The interrogators, too, were largely the same: An Jinkun, Muhter Emet, and Ekber. A new interrogator named Nurmemet also joined, and would try to get Abduweli to tell him about the US organizations that had “sent” him, in exchange for Nurmemet getting him out of detention.
To prove that Abduweli harbored anti-government sentiments from the start, Ekber tried to pursue a line of investigation into why Abduweli had resigned from a university position and why he had refused to join the Party. However, this was unsuccessful, as Abduweli had applications from several years earlier that had been rejected, thereby showing that he had applied for certain positions and simply hadn’t been accepted. Although the applications had largely been done with this idea in mind, it now became a convincing explanation for why he never became a civil servant.
One of the interrogators at the previous detention center – a Caucasian-looking Uyghur policeman who seemed relatively nice – was absent, having gone to Kashgar to check the files on Abduweli’s computer. At one point, this policeman admitted to Abduweli that his (the policeman’s) wife had cursed them for arresting Abduweli.
The total lack of Uyghur inmates made life at Liudaowan even harder, as even though Abduweli spoke Chinese fluently, he still felt a barrier between himself and the others when it came to day-to-day conversation. While the topic of Uyghurs as an ethnic group didn’t come up often, when it did it almost always brought to mind the July 5 events, which Abduweli worried caused his inmates to hate him (especially given his 751 uniform number). Most of them were real and hardened criminals, many from Sichuan, and were guilty of such crimes as weapons and drug trafficking, running gangs, and operating underground gambling establishments. The lessons about “ethnic unity”, “history”, and “patriotism” that inmates at the Tianshan detention center were indoctrinated with weren’t present at Liudaowan.
On September 13, Abduweli was summoned in the middle of the night and interrogated by Nurmemet, who tried to link him, through his friend Dilyar, to the organizers of the 1980 student protests. When that failed, he tried to link Abduweli to Radio Free Asia, using the fact that Abduweli was friends with one of the reporters. Occasionally, Nurmemet would leave the room to smoke while “forgetting” his phone, or while giving Abduweli access to a computer with internet, but these tactics didn’t work either. Sometimes, he would offer to release Abduweli on bail if Abduweli provided a clue. When Nurmemet resorted to violence or yelled, Abduweli got the impression that he was largely forced to put on this act, as Nurmemet seemed more preoccupied with the surveillance cameras above than with Abduweli.
At one point, he called a Chinese guard and had him give Abduweli a new winter uniform, while telling the guard that “despite being a criminal”, Abduweli was very learned and that interrogations with him were a thousand times better than with others. Later, he would tell Abduweli that he had praised him so that the Chinese not think that all Uyghurs were thieves and drug addicts. Abduweli also wanted these interrogations to last longer, since even with the beatings and the threats it was still infinitely better than the cell, and allowed him limited contact with the world outside. Here, he was able to breathe the fresh outdoor air that came in through the window and to occasionally catch glimpses of lawyers and others who might be in adjoining rooms or offices.
One day, there was a small incident where Abduweli physically bumped into a lawyer while walking back from an interrogation with Nurmemet and another guard. The other had been walking down the corridor in the opposite direction, but not paying attention as he was looking at his phone. Confused about what to do in this scenario, Abduweli grew worried and apologized, while Nurmemet hurried to laugh it off. The other guard, also busy on his phone, didn’t seem to care. Just in case, Abduweli apologized again. The lawyer, a tall Uyghur man, smiled and said that it was he who should be apologizing, while telling Abduweli not to worry and reminding him that they (the lawyers) were on his side. It was the first time in his detention that someone addressed Abduweli using the formal “you” (“siz“), as opposed to the informal (“sen“).

Regardless of how much Abduweli washed himself, he couldn’t escape the feeling of filth that had stayed with him after the “reception” he had gone through. On October 6, however, he would for the first time have his head and facial hair completely shaved. Following a wash-up with powdered soap – the regular soap having been used by the other inmates before him – he put on the new underwear that his brother had sent him and found himself feeling like a new person. As his thoughts cleared up, he let go of the darker ideas that he had been entertaining – pretending to be insane, harming himself so as to be taken for medical treatment, or choking a guard with a towel – and resolved himself to make it through his detention.
From that day on, he took to exercising, and would walk around the cell or outdoor area, jump in place, or do sit-ups.
While strenuous exercise, praying, and speaking Uyghur were all strictly forbidden, Abduweli still found ways to do all three furtively. Apart from occasionally speaking Uyghur to himself, he would also take advantage of the times that he was asked to translate, getting in a few extra sentences here and there. The two or more hours of nighttime guard duty also gave him an opportunity to pray, albeit out of schedule, and to jump in place. He managed to perform ablutions during washing by dumping water over his head, unable to find a better way. This he tried to do twice a day, using the Han Chinese stereotype that “Uyghurs smell” in his favor, as an excuse, although this became difficult in the winter months since he would not sweat as often.
Throughout the day, he would also run through the contents of the various books he was writing – “My Daughter’s America”, “On the Road of Parenthood”, and “An Uyghur Voyage to America” – in his head, in addition to thinking about the things he would write after his release. Eventually, he started to talk with the other inmates and patiently listen to their stories, discussing with them how they got into crime, and the roles that family, school, and society had played in this process.
Sometimes, looking at the fencing that separated them from the outside made him very depressed, however. He’d often see dead insects stuck in there, and the thought of death frightened him, with the idea that his mother might be gone by the time he got out being particularly scary. The other things – the cramped spaces, the suffering, and the detention – he could endure.
On the eve before the Qurban festival, Ge Qiang came to the cell and explicitly warned that there be no Qurban prayers made the next day, while telling Abduweli’s cellmates to watch him closely. In so doing, he essentially notified Abduweli of the time of the festival, which the other wouldn’t have known otherwise. The next day, Abduweli again used the “Uyghurs smell” excuse to shower himself with buckets of water, doing a silent and furtive prayer while the other inmates sat in lines and recited their crimes.
In one of the interrogations, Muhter, the interrogator from Kashgar, started to insult Abduweli. Although Abduweli wouldn’t disclose the identities of his partners, Muhter said, the latter would be more than happy to disclose to Abduweli the identities of the partners that Abduweli’s wife took to her bed during his absence, in addition to saying that he’d have his son marry one of Abduweli’s daughters when she came of age. Losing his patience, Abduweli spoke back, telling Muhter to shoot him dead if they wanted but to leave his family out of it, and asking Muhter what personal enmity there was between them. This infuriated Muhter, who seemed ready to beat Abduweli but would be called out of the room by someone else.
Soon after his return to the cell from the interrogation, it was announced that Abduweli would handle the entire night duty alone that day, without 2-hour rotations. Failing to stay awake, he found himself woken up with violent kicks on two occasions, the second time staggering and having his head hit the wall. The next day, it was announced that he had dozed off while on duty, and as punishment was ordered to spend the entire day brushing and watering out the toilet, after all the inmates went ahead and used it, without bothering to flush anything. The day was made even more difficult by his constantly struggling to stay awake, and the violent punishments this prompted.
Times like these made Abduweli regret knowing Chinese, since he would understand all of the insults being thrown at him together with the physical abuse. Some inmates would tell him to wipe their rear and wash their front, so that it could “count as an ablution”, adding that they could pray for him after so that “he may go to heaven”. On the day when he had the bag of urine dumped on his head, he had to listen to them say that their urine had “disinfected” him, that Uyghurs were filthy and used to living with animals and cooking with manure, and that naturally they were already used to urine and that Abduweli should in fact be imploring them to urinate on him.
During interrogations, An Jinkun would often ask the most detailed questions, often revisiting the things already asked by the Uyghur interrogators as if he didn’t trust them. Having checked Abduweli’s computer, they took to asking him more about that, about his friendship with a Radio Free Asia reporter, and about how Abduweli helped establish a link between a mother and her son-in-law while he was in the US, as the two sides hadn’t seen each other in a decade. Although Abduweli hadn’t met Rebiya Kadeer during his visit to Washington, the interrogators seemed bent on proving that he had, and would ask him about it repeatedly.
Often, An Jinkun and Nurmemet would use the “good cop, bad cop” strategy. After one of the interrogations, An and the policeman recording the meeting left to go to lunch, leaving Abduweli and Nurmemet alone. During this time, Nurmemet told Abduweli that he was sick of this job, and proposed that Abduweli need not confess, but that he should snitch on someone whom he knew was against the government and doing politically harmful things. Then Abduweli could be let go while Nurmemet would be promoted out of his current position. However, Abduweli said that he didn’t know any such people, after pretending to think about it.
At one point, Abduweli found himself interrogated by An Jinkun only, in sessions that totaled dozens of hours in length. During these, An would display his knowledge of Islam, the Quran, and the Muslim countries, noting, among other things, that – by leaning towards the liberal ways of the West – Turkey was becoming less Muslim than China (by becoming more tolerant of homosexuality, for example). Abduweli almost found these sessions more reminiscent of Islamic sermons than interrogations. Upon learning that Abduweli knew Farsi, An lamented the mess that Abduweli was in now, since they needed Farsi speakers for their overseas intelligence, which the police spoke very highly of. An also said that the United States was focused on splitting China, and was using the Uyghurs after their previous attempts with Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen had failed. But this would never work, he said, since China had a 5000-year history and was rich with culture, while the US only had a 200-year history and was only “rich with technology” (adding also that the Uyghurs now had to choose which they would side with).
In the cell, political discussions about Uyghurs and terrorism were also not infrequent, with such people as Rebiya Kadeer and Orkesh Dolet mentioned. Abduweli tried not to listen to them, since the level of ignorance was too much (many of the Han inmates, often uneducated, thought all Muslims in the world to be the same race). Among the cellmates was a great-great grandson of the general Tao Zhiyue, and had studied at the same middle school as Orkesh Dolet. The cell boss, Zhang Jun, also considered himself a Xinjiang expert, and as such often had something to say.
Abduweli would also learn of some of the previous inmates who had been held there. This included the notorious serial killer Bai Baoshan, whose name was written on one of the walls (allegedly by Bai himself). There had also been an Uyghur named Abdurahman, who had been arrested for terrorism and executed in early September, not long before Abduweli’s transfer.

According to Zhang Jun, Abdurahman was from Ghulja’s Chilek Neighborhood, and had spent two years in Liudaowan, handcuffed and fettered the entire time. Only his right hand was given some freedom of movement, which he then used to wash his clothes and do other tasks. On one occasion, Abdurahman made a needle from one of the chicken bones left over from a big plate chicken that the inmates had splurged on, and would use it to sew buttons back onto people’s clothing. One day, the people from the procuratorate came and asked that Abdurahman disclose who his accomplices were, that he confess his crimes, and that he express regret, in exchange for lighter treatment. He refused to do any of this. When asked what he would do if he were not sentenced to death, he told them that he would set the prisons, courts, and police stations on fire.
The day before the death penalty was implemented, a guard came and asked if Abdurahman had any requests, to which Abdurahman said that he had three: 1) to be shaven completely and take a hot bath, 2) to be given a prayer mat so that he could do a two-part namaz, and 3) to talk to his parents, wife, and son, so as to get their blessings. However, all three requests were denied.
The next day, he had his restraints removed, for the first time in two years, so as to be taken to his execution. Unable to stand, he had to crawl out of the cell. As he did, he turned to Zhang Jun and told him that the detention center would return the money on his jail account to his wife, but that Zhang Jun should take the cost of the two bags of milk he had lent Abdurahman out of that, while also thanking Zhang for the milk. Recalling Abdurahman, Zhang spoke of him with respect, saying that he was a “true political criminal” and a hero who didn’t go back on his words, even when faced with death. Uyghur terrorists who attacked police, army, and judicial targets had his approval, he said, but lamented that most did not.
After 36 days in detention (a day shy of the legal maximum of 37 without formal arrest), Abduweli was brought the notice of his formal arrest (逮捕) and asked to sign. It was in Chinese, though law required it to be provided in Uyghur, and with the charge changed from “false capital contribution” to “illegal fundraising”. Abduweli signed without much thought or question, which seemed to surprise the two Uyghur police officers who had brought it – Gulbahar and Perhat, from the financial-crimes investigation department, whom he hadn’t seen since his very first interrogation.
Gulbahar asked Abduweli if he had kids, and he said that yes, two daughters. She asked their names and he told her, but had to catch himself on the younger daughter’s, Uyghuriye’s, name, as he had been telling the investigators all along that she was named “Hendan” (for fear that they find “Uyghuriye” separatist and use it against him). Thinking about his family caused him to cry, with Perhat telling him to control it, while telling him about Liudaowan’s history. Allegedly, this was one of the worst prisons from Sheng Shicai‘s time, and the oldest in Urumqi, traditionally intended for the most severe (and often political) criminals, with Rebiya Kadeer also having been held there.
Though Perhat may have mistaken Abduweli’s tears for concern over the arrest notice, Abduweli was in reality relieved, believing that they had given up on placing a heavy political charge on him. He also wondered how they even managed to justify the fundraising charge, seeing as almost none of the interrogations had focused on this topic. Afterwards, Abduweli was given a regular gray uniform and transferred out of the breaking-in cell (Block 2, Cell 1) to a regular cell (Block 1, Cell 6), further strengthening his belief that he was out of political territory.
Here, too, Abduweli was the only Uyghur, but there was no real abuse, torture, interrogation, or arbitrary punishment inside the cell. There was no political education about ethnic unity, Party history, patriotism, and the like either, presumably because of the detention center being in the Chinese part of the city (unlike the one in the Tianshan District). Speaking was not restricted, and people could chat for as long as they wanted. Nevertheless, while all the other inmates were allowed to sleep on the raised platform, Abduweli had to sleep on the cold cement floor.
When he asked the cell boss the reason, he was surprised to learn that he was still classified as a political prisoner after all. The boss, while in the police office, had caught a glimpse of Abduweli’s file, which said that Abduweli was a dangerous individual who was to be kept under close surveillance and was not allowed to see a lawyer, with all relevant queries to be addressed to Rehmitulla from the domestic-security division. Feeling that Abduweli didn’t completely believe this, the cell boss went on to recite half of Rehmitulla’s phone number.
All this made Abduweli worry, and he began to wonder if he would ever be released. He recalled the case of a man from Ghulja named Halis, who was detained after the July 5 incident and would be at Liudaowan for four years without any verdict being issued.
The boss in the new cell was also surnamed Zhang, and was an ethnic Han from Yanqi County. He had previously been the deputy mayor of Korla City, before a 2013 crackdown on corruption saw a number of officials sacked, himself included. Because he had been made the boss of his cell on the day after his arrival, the other inmates didn’t like him much, and so Abduweli ended up being the only person he could chat with. (However, their relations would be damaged by the news of the Tiananmen car attack that took place in late October 2013. News of the incident would be shown repeatedly, making the Han inmates increasingly resentful towards Abduweli.)

One day, a new inmate, another Zhang, was brought in handcuffed and fettered, and it would fall on Abduweli to look after him – washing his clothes, feeding him, and cleaning the wounds that the restraints inflicted. After a couple of weeks, Zhang got a lot better, and would start chatting with others.
Talking to Abduweli, he told him that Abduweli was the second Uyghur in his life that he had taken a liking to. The first was Abduweli’s colleague, Dilyar, with whom Zhang had been interned earlier. Although Abduweli knew that both of his colleagues (Dilyar and Memetsidiq) were also at the Liudaowan detention center, he had only crossed paths with Dilyar in the hall on the way to and from interrogations, and didn’t know much more about how he was doing. What particularly worried him was Dilyar’s stubborn character, which could potentially get the other in trouble.
According to Zhang, Dilyar was always writing appeals, which no one took seriously or believed in, despite the right to write them being among the detainees’ official rights. He had also gone on a hunger strike, which resulted in his being force fed the “hardship soup” through a hose. Hearing this, Abduweli regretted asking.
One evening, Zhang expressed surprise that not all Uyghurs were “coarse”, “uneducated”, and “backward”, to which Abduweli said that the two groups – Han and Uyghur – had a lot in common, as a result of essentially studying the same materials in school, watching the same TV, and so on. As an example, he brought up the time he was studying Turkish abroad, with his class having four Africans, four Central Asians, a French person, and a Russian. Whenever they had to do group exercises, Abduweli would find himself alone, as the Africans spoke French and partnered with the French person, while the Central Asians spoke Russian and partnered with the Russian. This surprised Zhang, who did not understand how the Africans could speak French or why the Central Asians, being Muslim, didn’t know Arabic.
Zhang was a former soldier, but after leaving the military had taken to theft. Recalling the time he was posted in Kashgar, he started telling Abduweli of what it was like there, unaware of Abduweli being a native of the area. Abduweli, for his part, didn’t say anything, having already noticed at the previous detention center that guards seemed more comfortable dealing with Urumqi natives, prompting Abduweli to act like one also. Here, too, he maintained the identity, even though a lot of Zhang’s narrative was very narrow and a figment of propaganda.

In particular, Zhang had been there on July 30-31, 2011, when there was a violent incident at the shopping mall on Kashgar City’s People’s Road, and had been dispatched to help deal with the incident. Later that night, they were told that the “terrorists” had been spotted in a cotton field east of the city, prompting a detachment to surround the field and give multiple warnings, before opening fire at dawn. When dawn came and no reply had been received, they opened fire and searched the field. What they discovered were three dead sheep.
While the story brought Abduweli much laughter, Zhang was quite serious, admitting that at that moment he had been terrified, in part because he feared for what would happen to his sanity if they checked and found a mother and child. And even though that did not turn out to be the case, seeing a dead ewe still left him feeling miserable, and he would quit the army after two years. He started crying after telling the story, missing his own mother.
The Tiananmen Square car attack of October 28, 2013 seemed to prompt a general wave of arrests in Xinjiang, and suddenly the Liudaowan detention center started filling up with Uyghurs, with virtually all of them being charged as political prisoners and given orange jackets to wear. Again Abduweli was called on to translate for the police staff seeking to crack the numerous cases, becoming witness to over a hundred of them. Following the sudden influx of political prisoners, the general atmosphere grew stricter as well, with “ethnic unity” and “patriotism” classes being added to the daily routine. The Han and Hui detainees were particularly annoyed, since they were also forced to participate and were unable to simply spend the time chatting, as they normally would.
It was following this new wave of arrests that Abduweli became acquainted with Shah Mamut, a native of Yarkand County who would become Abduweli’s longest cellmate. In general, the two were able to maintain a good friendship, with Abduweli managing to get permission to teach Shah Mamut Chinese, while just barely convincing Shah Mamut to learn. Still, time and again the two would find themselves at odds whenever Shah Mamut’s narrow religious education came into conflict with Abduweli’s more worldly views. After Nelson Mandela died and they were shown a film about his life, Abduweli explained to Shah Mamut who Mandela was and the great things he had done for his people, only to have the other say: “So what? He’s still an infidel and will go to hell.” This made Abduweli angry, who replied with: “If I could do that much for my people, I’d gladly go to hell myself.”
This episode temporarily soured the relations between them, and brought Shah Mamut’s lessons to a halt.
Later, when Ge Qiang came to the cell and threatened Shah Mamut, warning him that he should own up to his crimes, Abduweli intentionally mistranslated, telling Shah Mamut that he would be freed from his fetters if he learned Chinese. This led them to restart lessons, something that Abduweli enjoyed and found meaningful.
However, their relations soured again while they were watching the weather forecast, with Abduweli saying that he would put his clothes outside since it was supposed to snow, as the cold might kill certain viruses. To this, Shah Mamut said that the Han girl on TV couldn’t predict the weather, that it was something that only Allah knew, and that Abduweli should pray to Allah for good weather. When Abduweli tried to explain what meteorology was, Shah Mamut stated that he had nothing to say to atheist scholars such as Abduweli, and walked away.

Shah Mamut also didn’t think much of Abduweli’s mother-tongue initiative, thinking it to be petty nationalism and not something that Allah would care or ask about on judgment day. Still, the two managed to maintain relations, with Shah Mamut being very quick at learning Chinese when he did.
For a number of months, Abduweli would suffer from scabies and find it hard to sleep, as he hadn’t been given any medicine for it and as the detention center doctors and guards typically ignored his complaints, with the doctors’ duties limited to distributing the same 3-4 medications for everything.

During guard duty on one cold December night, he found it particularly unbearable and poured ice-cold water on himself, following this with a silent prayer. Before he knew it, he was kicked in the stomach, then hit again. The attacker was Ma Wei, a Hui thief who was on duty with him. A guard saw this and interfered, waking up the cell boss, who apologized and said that he would sort it out himself. When asked, Ma Wei accused Abduweli of trying to “curse” him.
The next morning, the cell had a meeting, during which Ma Wei repeated his accusations many times, accusing Abduweli of secretly praying and trying to curse him. The cell boss, taking Abduweli’s side, asked Ma Wei how he knew this, to which Ma answered that, as a Muslim, he knew about the timing during prayer, saying that he had noticed how Abduweli would go silent five times a day, and how he would rinse his nose and mouth prior to washing.
It didn’t take long for Abduweli to realize that Ma was trying to get revenge for something that happened the day before, when he spotted Ma hiding garlic in his underpants and broke out laughing, leading to Ma being discovered and laughed at. However, Ma’s accusations now made him worried, since those who prayed were punished by being handcuffed and having ten-kilo shackles put around their ankles, making everything else even more difficult.
The cell boss said that Ma was welcome to report Abduweli, but that he was the only witness to it, while his beating Abduweli was something that everyone had witnessed. In the end, he punished Ma by having him sleep on the cement floor that night, while Abduweli, for the first time in his months of detention, was allowed to sleep on the raised platform, in Ma’s place. The itching didn’t bother him that night.
Abduweli would occasionally complain about the scabies to his interrogators but be ignored. At one point, getting angry, he told them that they would have a lot to answer for in front of his thousands of students if he happened to die there. As a result, the interrogators returned the next day and asked him, very seriously, what he had meant, who the thousands of students were, and how he had organized them. Because Abduweli had referred to the people who had attended his lectures, he did not actually remember any of them, though it took the entire day to explain this.
In December 2013, the interrogations stopped entirely, which Abduweli regretted as this was one of his few connections with the world outside. The other connection, which he cherished, were the money and small gifts (books, clothes) that were sent to him by friends and acquaintances, with most of the money being sent by his brother and the rest coming from people who were anonymous or whom he didn’t know. Even though the majority of the money was intercepted and spent by others, the act itself was enough to invigorate him, as were the accompanying receipts, which reminded him that he was not forgotten. This was also one of the rare times that Abduweli would be called by name, and not by his detainee number, since that is what was on the receipt and what was read by the guards during delivery.
One day, their cell received a drug addict named Ismayil – an Uyghur who had grown up in a residential unit of the Urumqi railway department and spoke Chinese fluently. For two weeks, Shah Mamut and Abduweli would pour water on his head multiple times each day so as to get him out of his addiction, which they barely did. Afterwards, they became friends, with Abduweli and Shah Mamut sharing their food with him as his appetite came back, often ordering the 80RMB “cadre meal” and splitting it between the three of them. Because Ismayil was not a political prisoner, he didn’t fear the cell boss or the guards, and would often speak Uyghur freely, including with those delivering food in the hall. It was through these chats that Abduweli was able to learn that his business partner Dilyar was held in the detention block opposite to his.
Still, Ismayil was unable to get rid of his smoking addiction, often begging the Chinese cellmates to give him a whiff of the cigarettes that were smuggled into the cell, at times smoking with the Hui cellmates as they turned their backs to the camera and chatted about how smoking was not actually haram. Shah Mamut would ask Ismayil to stop smoking on three occasions, but after it yielded nothing, he told Abduweli that it was haram for them to share food with someone who smoked. Their relations with Ismayil chilled, then eventually turned to friction, with Ismayil calling them “backward southerners” when talking to the other inmates.
Things reached a peak just before the Spring Festival, when Abduweli and Shah Mamut were expected to use their money to order fried dishes for the entire cell (as only Abduweli, Shah Mamut, and the cell boss had been able to afford such purchases, and had also been covering the everyday essentials). Shah Mamut told Abduweli that he was against this, as the food was not halal and, on top of that, them spending money to buy it for others would be like them helping celebrate an “infidel holiday”. Consequently, they decided not to do it.
The other cellmates didn’t like this and began to complain, after which Abduweli tried to explain what haram and halal were in Islam, and why they couldn’t do this. Ismayil objected, saying that this was not haram but halal, then made a big stir, which led to a guard named Wei appearing at the door and asking what was happening. Instead of answering himself, the cell boss passed that duty to Abduweli, who said that he had been explaining about haram and halal. To this the guard replied that he would teach Abduweli about haram and halal himself.
Abduweli was then chained and shackled and told to get out of the cell, being kicked three times as he tried to crawl out the door. Finally, he was let out and taken to a “training cell”. Shah Mamut received the same, being taken to a different “training cell” in a different direction.
When he got there, Abduweli was surprised to find all of the inmates in the outdoor area. The guard then announced that Abduweli had “propagated extremism” and would now be paraded as punishment, being chained at the neck while remaining handcuffed and with his legs shackled. He was then made to crawl like a dog through the halls of the detention center, stopping outside of every cell to have the guard announce what he had done and how this would be the punishment for anyone who did the same. It only stopped when Abduweli’s ankles began to bleed, with the blood dripping on the floor.
With his feet and hands restrained, like those of a sheep to be slaughtered, he would then spend a week in the “training cell”, completely deprived of the standard rights, having no one to help him with the toilet, and with the scabies acting up as well.
Because of the restraints, he had to use his teeth to open the faucet in order to wash his face, prompting an elderly Han inmate to help him, closing the faucet and wiping Abduweli’s face with a clean towel. As Abduweli later learned, this inmate’s name was Ai Weiguang. He was in his sixties, and was the “secretary” of the cell. A retired cadre, he had been locked up after taking up a friend’s invitation to go to Hami and oversee the operation of a mine, which resulted in his being hit with a “running an illegal mine” charge.
The week went by, and Abduweli was returned to the original cell. Shah Mamut was also brought in afterwards. As they’d learn, the other inmates had treated themselves to a feast with their money after all.
Another week passed, and Ai Weiguang was transferred to their cell as well. After fighting with the boss of the “training cell” because the latter discriminated against Uyghurs in their night-duty assignments, Ai was stripped of his “secretary” position.
Despite having lived in Urumqi for over 30 years, Ai Weiguang had kept his distance from Uyghurs, believing the general stereotypes and propaganda that they were either “kebab sellers, thieves, or terrorists”. His time in detention would change his views radically, however.
In particular, he told Abduweli about how Uyghur inmates always washed their hands before food and after using the toilet (“istinja” in Islam, but something the guards typically ignored since many Han inmates took to doing this also and it helped prevent hemorrhoids, which were common), in addition to the Uyghur inmates often being against wastefulness and against throwing leftover food into the toilet – something that some inmates had allegedly successfully petitioned the detention center to forbid, as they could not urinate or defecate on food. Another inmate left an impression on him after getting angry at Ai for turning on the faucet as a means of cooling off, telling Ai that he was wasting water. That same inmate also once fought with a cellmate because the other had killed an ant.
One of Ai’s former cellmates, Seypulla, once discovered an elm sapling in the outdoor area of their cell. Fearing that the guards would cut it, he hid it with a blanket, while diligently watering it on a daily basis. Ultimately, it was discovered during a general inspection and cut, by which time it was tall enough to reach up to the knees. According to Ai, Seypulla was so depressed by this that he didn’t eat for three days and got sick. He was later given a life sentence.
“You’re not so scary after all,” Ai concluded, talking about these things with Abduweli.
While Abduweli helped teach Uyghur inmates Chinese, Ai Weiguang often did speaking exercises with them.
Later, they would discuss what each would do after getting out of detention, with Ai writing out the three plans that he had: 1) to provide a cheap daily breakfast to the Uyghur workers and their children at the horse racetrack, as well as read them a book once a month, 2) to build a kindergarten or school for children of detainees, and 3) to help former inmates start businesses. However, none of these would come to fruition, as Ai Weiguang would later be sentenced to life in prison.
The detention center’s reception of the Lunar New Year was extremely different from that of Qurban Eid (when the guards simply warned the detainees not to pray, a day or two in advance). For the Lunar New Year, the detention-center staff came to extend greetings to the detainees, including some of the leaders who would normally never come near the cells. Two free meals were provided on New Year’s Day, and the detainees were allowed to watch whatever TV channels they wished.

The detainees also made dumplings, which Abduweli didn’t want to consume as he did not know the nature of the meat and because he worried that it may not be healthy, as two detainees with tuberculosis and hepatitis B had contributed to making the dumplings with everyone else. However, since he felt monitored and feared that not eating the dumpling could result in being labeled “extremist”, he forced himself to eat one, but immediately had a negative reaction and wanted to vomit it out. He managed to do so eventually, without arousing too much suspicion, though not without throwing up blood first.
The detainees were also made to write letters home, which were highly censored and had to express gratitude to the Party and the detention center’s administration. Some people didn’t have anyone to write to. Because many of them hadn’t gone to school and didn’t know how to write properly, Abduweli was asked to write the letters for them, with priority determined by rank. Although Abduweli decided that he too wanted to write something to his family to let them know that he was alive – especially since writing in Uyghur was permitted – he found himself short on time. The constant writing and rewriting for the others, with some of the cellmates tearing up earlier drafts and asking him to change the content, eventually resulted in there being only one sheet left, with the allotted time running out. Looking at Shah Mamut, he found the other crying silently, since political prisoners were not allowed to write letters home.
As Abduweli prepared to finally write his own, another inmate meekly asked him if he could write him one as well. This inmate, also named Abduweli, was a heroin addict who had been there for two weeks, and had already received his share of rough treatment. Unable to say no, Abduweli went on to fulfill the request.
As it turned out, this man’s father had disappeared during the July 5 incident, leaving his mother to look after her two sons alone, and forced to sell her blood at a private clinic once a month as a means of paying for the older son’s tuition in inner China. In his letter, the heroin-addict Abduweli asked Abduweli to finish by telling his mother a secret: she didn’t need to sell her blood anymore, since the older brother had dropped his studies and was lying to her, having left school and also fallen to a heroin addiction.
The letters were then collected, and when Abduweli told Ge Qiang that there hadn’t been enough paper for him, Ge Qiang gave him a few extra pages. However, depressed by the other Abduweli’s story and bothered by the knowledge that his letter would be inspected, he found it difficult to write. He would only do so after the Lunar New Year had passed, but the original batch of letters was already sent out by then, and Abduweli’s would not be sent out with them.
On one memorable occasion, Abduweli was able to treat himself to leghmen, though in a very unconventional manner. One detainee, Abdusalam, had been taken in for heroin use and sentenced to 6 months, but because of the sentence being too short for prison transfer was assigned to the pre-trial detention center’s “labor cell”, where inmates were relatively free and given such jobs as delivering food to the other prisoners, cleaning the detention-center courtyard, and cleaning the staff offices.
Becoming friends with Abduweli, Abdusalam would talk to him about different things. Once, he told him about an incident in his native county of Kelpin, where an Uyghur had been shot by traffic police for passing in front of an inspection checkpoint “too often” on his motorbike. The incident prompted protests from the locals, and a subsequent crackdown on the protesters.
When passing by the cell with the food cart, Abdusalam often called out to Abduweli as “Gulen Ependi”, though Abduweli had no idea where the other had heard of his old internet handle. Once, while in the cell’s outdoor area, Abduweli heard Abdusalam call him from the other side of the wall. His parents lived close to the detention center, and his mother had made leghmen for him. Wanting to share it with Abduweli, he proceeded to toss the noodles and stir-fry broth over the wall in a bag. However, because the outdoor areas were covered from above by both grating and fencing, the bag ended up getting caught, with the noodles and ingredients slowly slipping and dripping through the openings. Like a little boy, Abduweli took to catching the drops with his mouth as they fell, then jumping up and trying to pull down any noodles he could reach. To date, he recalls this as being the best leghmen he’s ever eaten.
On March 10, 2014, the procuratorate fixed Abduweli’s as an “illegal absorption of public deposits” case, after which the police interrogators disappeared for good and were replaced by frequent chats with the procurators. At the end of March, a middle-aged female procurator decided to be honest with Abduweli and told him that there was absolutely nothing on him that could be used to establish a crime, but that they would continue to investigate him on this charge so as to prevent him from falling back into the police’s hands, in which case the result would be the one dictated by the police (spying, separatism, etc.), as opposed to just a financial crime.

When he asked why they couldn’t simply return the case to the police and state that there was insufficient evidence, the woman from the procuratorate said that they had, three times. However, because of the case being one that the autonomous region political-and-legal-affairs commission (政法委) was directly involved in, they had no choice but to go forward with it.
From that time on, his treatment at the detention center also improved, presumably because of him no longer being a political prisoner. The guards became less strict, occasionally speaking Uyghur with him and allowing him to look around the halls more as he walked, during which time he would spot his two business partners, Dilyar and Memetsidiq, in their cells. Memetsidiq’s hair had turned grey. At one point, he saw Dilyar grinning, as if to say that “justice has triumphed”.
It was also then that he was finally able to meet with a lawyer, twice, though his initial hopes were somewhat dashed during the initial meeting. Again they were in the interrogation room, save that Abduweli was no longer inside the cage but sat across the table from the lawyer. As Abduweli quickly learned, the other was not at all familiar with his case, the materials of which were stacked in twelve 200-page notebooks, with the lawyer sandwiched between them. On the positive side, these meetings did allow Abduweli to reestablish some contact with the outside world, and he would learn that no one in his family or social circle had been detained because of him. The lawyer also showed him photos of his daughter, causing Abduweli to break down and prompting the lawyer to put them away.
Strict surveillance would remain, however, with the lawyer refusing to answer any potentially sensitive questions and motioning to the cameras in the room. When Abduweli asked him to deliver the letter he had written but failed to send, the lawyer refused outright, with Abduweli being searched and scolded afterwards for bringing the letter to the meeting without permission.
In the middle of 2014, Abduweli was transferred to Cell 7 in Block 1, and was surprised to find that the cell boss there was Uyghur, which was a first. Unlike with the previous transfers, there was no initiatory hazing or abuse, with Abduweli even given a spot on the raised platform, rather than on the floor. The boss, Abliz, had previously made a lot of money in the 80s as a businessman, before going into government and becoming the head of Tekichi Township in Korla. Later, both he and the deputy head, Zhang, were arrested for bribery, and were now in the same cell.

Abduweli was surprised to find how down-to-earth and hospitable Abliz was, in stark contrast to Zhang, who maintained an air of superiority. Opposed to hazing and abuse in his cell, Abliz kept it to a minimum and would often share the nan-wrapped kebab he got once or twice a week with the others.
Once, he told Abduweli about how he had led people from the Korla family-planning department in pursuit of a local woman who was carrying an eight-month baby outside the plan, and had fled to Turpan. Tracking her down, Abliz and the others had the doctors force an abortion, killing the baby. This incident would continue to haunt Abliz, and he told Abduweli that he believed his being caught and locked up here was that unborn baby’s revenge. During nighttime guard duty, Abduweli would often see Abliz tossing and turning and having nightmares, after which he’d be spiritless and depressed the following day.
Apart from the wave of arrests in November 2013, Abduweli also noticed a large influx of Uyghur inmates in March 2014 and June 2014. The March 2014 detainees were often brought from inner China, following the Kunming Station knife attack, while the June 2014 were a result of the bombing at the Urumqi vegetable market and started with arrests of young men. By July 2014, however, many older people would start being detained as well, including the elderly, who were not suited for life in pre-trial detention and found it particularly difficult. It was especially hard for Abduweli to watch as one elderly man, unable to walk, would have to be carried to and from his interrogations. One of Abduweli’s cellmates, Abdurahman, said that this man had taught him religion when he was little, and Abdurahman always remembered him as being very kind.

Political education and religious re-education increased accordingly, and there was less time spent outside. An Uyghur instructor came in once to give them a lecture and warn them that anyone caught praying, speaking Uyghur, or writing fake repentance letters would be punished with solitary confinement. The general atmosphere got a lot tenser and the guards stricter. This included categorically refusing to keep the outdoor surveillance window, used by patrols walking along the raised pathway that circled the exterior, open for longer than the standard hours of 10 to 19 (requests that they had sometimes granted).
As the detention center continued to fill up with Uyghur political detainees, Abduweli was again tasked with translator duties during interrogations. While these may have freed him from other things, he often tried to avoid them, hating the idea of becoming an accessory to someone’s tragic fate, even if that was sometimes unavoidable.
Although the majority of the inmates in the latest wave of detentions had been taken as a result of the May 22 market bombing, only two of the ones whom Abduweli knew about were even aware of the incident. The rest were detained for such reasons as listening to sermons about “jihad” and “Hijrat“, downloading this sort of content to their phones, calling for the boycott of Chinese products, and listening to Radio Free Asia. Meanwhile, the two people who knew about the bombing had witnessed it, taken photos, and shared them on WeChat, which then prompted their detention.
One of the two was a young man from Guma County named Nurmemet, and was cellmates with Abduweli, whose identity as “Mr. Gulen” he somehow also knew. When Abduweli asked him which language Nurmemet wanted him to teach him (Chinese, English, or Turkish), Nurmemet chose Chinese without hesitation, and proved to be a very quick learner. Though he tried to copy Abduweli’s exercise routine, as a new inmate he would be under close surveillance for 51 days, and would be given a warning whenever he tried to exercise.
Once, Abduweli asked him why he shared photos of the incident online, with Nurmemet admitting that this “act of jihad” against the “infidels” had made him happy. Abduweli berated him, saying that it was stupid to get detained for expressing his joy this way, given how tight security was and how there would be no one to look after his pregnant wife now.
There was also a murderer in their cell, named Wang Ping, who had killed and dismembered a person. Most of the time, he would keep to himself and play Chinese checkers, but Nurmemet took to talking to him as Chinese practice, much to Abduweli’s disgust. Once, when Nurmemet was charged with cleaning duties and was about to be punished because he hadn’t understood them correctly, Wang Ping stood up for him and said he would accept the punishment in his place, surprising Abduweli and apparently convincing the guard, as the punishment was voided. Later, Nurmemet told Abduweli that he was trying to make Wang Ping Muslim, since the other was going to be executed in two months and Nurmemet didn’t want him to go to hell as a non-believer.
At the beginning of June 2014, a canister of what appeared to be tear gas was suddenly thrown into the outdoor recreation space outside the cell, while the inmates were on a thirty-minute morning break. As the gas entered the cell and started to spread, the head of the detention center came on the loudspeaker to tell them that there was nothing to worry about and that this was a test, instructing the cells’ secretaries to record everyone’s reactions, noting how many people were falling unconscious, how many were vomiting, and how many had trouble breathing. As Abduweli looked around, he saw one Pakistani inmate, Seypulla, lying unconscious, three vomiting in front of the toilet, and others lined up in front of the water pipe, frantically washing their faces. Because Seypulla’s condition worried him, Abduweli moved in the direction of the intercom, but was stopped by several Chinese inmates, who told him that it was best avoiding the infirmary unless someone had passed out from an actual illness. The infirmary, according to them, was its own hell, where the person would be tied down and forced to remain for 24 hours, and would often end up hurrying to return to the cell even if they weren’t fully healed. As it turned out, half an hour later everyone really did go back to normal, with those vomiting having recovered and Seypulla having come to.
One of the Han inmates suggested that they were being experimented on, and that the tear gas canister was a new untested model. Abduweli found this credible, starting to look at all the medicine they took and medical tests they went through in a new light also. A lot about those procedures didn’t make sense, from the way they were given unknown pills and then had blood, saliva, and urine tests done not long after, to how the medical staff would ask them about potential side effects, to how the amount of blood being drawn from their arms was a bag’s worth (Abduweli’s initial suspicion was that they sold it).
On June 2, 2014, Abduweli was summoned to meet with a lawyer, being called by his name rather than number. As it turned out, this was not the lawyer he had met before but a young woman, whom he didn’t know and who looked like she was a recent university graduate. Before he could ask if there had been a mistake, she showed him a photo on her phone, of a protester holding up a poster with Abduweli’s and Ilham Tohti‘s photos on it (Ilham Tohti had been arrested earlier that year), and asked him if he knew the person. However, before Abduweli even had time to react, she yelled to one of the detention center staff that they had got the wrong Abduweli, as this one didn’t recognize the “criminal suspect” in the photo. She then left the room, while Abduweli was taken back to his cell.

The whole episode, and the fact that people hadn’t forgotten him, made him so elated that the guard had to tell him to slow down, asking: “Are you going to the cell or to a wedding?”
In mid-June, Abduweli was suddenly transferred to a new cell again – a “training cell” where he once more had to start from scratch, being given duties scrubbing the toilet. For the first time in his detention, he was also asked by the cell boss, a Sichuan native, to give him a back rub. Abduweli found this humiliating and ultimately couldn’t do it very well, which prompted the boss to get angry and ask if there was someone else who could. An Uyghur inmate happily stepped in and started chatting with the boss, while whispering to inform Abduweli that they knew each other.
The man, whose name was Tahir, was someone Abduweli had met on a train from Urumqi to Lanzhou in 2001. He had been in prison before, being detained in 1993 for founding an “Uyghur Freedom Organization” and newspaper. In 2002, he was sentenced again, to 8 years, this time for taking part in Hizb ut-Tahrir activities. Abduweli would remain in touch with him, and Tahir once tried to talk him out of the idea of opening Uyghur-language kindergartens, saying that this could only land him in trouble and that prison was a hell that should be avoided.
In their cell, Tahir avoided talking to Abduweli and generally mingled with the Han inmates, playing checkers and cards. He was also on good terms with the boss, since it was with Tahir’s money that the boss ordered better food for himself, in addition to cigarettes and a special drug through the infirmary. The benefits from this relationship would carry over to Abduweli – he would no longer be asked to massage the boss’s back, and would also be freed from toilet duty when a new inmate arrived a few days later.
During the roll call, when everyone had to announce the specifics of their arrest, Abduweli learned that Tahir had been taken in for possession of “separatist” materials, but wouldn’t learn the specifics until he was asked by the boss to write down in Chinese the circumstances of arrest for some of the newly arrived inmates. Abduweli used the opportunity to also talk to Tahir, asking him why he ended up here and why he seemed so happy all the time.
Tahir explained that his company had been targeted as “harmful” during a recent crackdown, in part because he himself had been in prison before. So as to avoid getting everyone else in trouble, which could have impacted hundreds of people, he turned himself in to the police and confessed to having stored a speech by Ilham Tohti’s daughter, Jewher. As to why he was so happy, he said that he now found life in detention calmer than life outside, where he would always be living in fear. He was not afraid of going to prison again, he said, and would use it as a learning experience.
Once, when Tahir was showering, Abduweli noticed the many scars on his back. These were from the bricks that interrogators had laid there following his first detention, after heating them up in an oven.
Spending a week in the “training cell”, Abduweli was then sent back to the old cell where Abliz was the boss, which he welcomed even though he’d miss Tahir. Towards the end of June, they received another political inmate, Yaqupjan, who had been detained in Guangzhou and was being held in Urumqi only temporarily, to be transferred to Hotan in a few days. He was really young and looked like he had just hit puberty. Entering the cell without knowing the procedures, he failed to put his hands behind his head, prompting Abliz to give a sign to one of the Han inmates, who then proceeded to have Yaqupjan strip down. Two of the inmates then started beating him.
Unable to stand it, Abduweli pulled one of them off, after which the other one stopped and looked at Abliz, who was about to say something but then let it go. In the process, the inmates had taken a handmade charm off Yaqupjan, who seemed more upset by this than the beating. When Abduweli saw his clenched fists, he whispered to him that this wasn’t “a place to clench one’s fists, but to bite one’s lip”. Yaqupjan broke into tears, saying that the charm was a keepsake from his mother, who had made it for him and told him to never part with it.
As he sat down and cooled off, Abduweli started to fear the punishment to come, since siding with a political detainee usually had dire consequences. He looked at Abliz, who reprimanded him.
Meanwhile, some of the Han inmates continued to play with Yaqupjan’s charm. At one point, it ended up in front of Yaqupjan and he reached for it, only to have the inmate who had beaten him earlier step on his hand and kick him in the face, leading to numerous inmates joining in to start beating Yaqupjan again.
Abduweli threw himself on top of the boy to protect him. Not long after, the cell door opened and a Han guard walked in, taking Abduweli and leading him away.
Certain that he was being taken to the feared solitary confinement cell, Abduweli was surprised when they ended up at the guard’s office, where the other offered Abduweli tea. To Abduweli’s shock, the guard told him that he had read Abduweli’s file and that this was the first time he had seen someone go to jail for their aspirations. And while he didn’t care for Abduweli’s political stances, seeing him protect Yaqupjan made him conclude that Abduweli was a good person. Though “work reasons” prohibited him from telling Abduweli that he had acted correctly, he couldn’t punish him for what he did either, since doing others harm was something that went against his principles. Telling Abduweli that he would transfer him to a cell with fewer people, he asked him to teach him English on the nights that he had guard duty. Worried that the guard might change his mind and rescind the offer, Abduweli agreed without hesitation.
On July 4, 2014, the procedures for Abduweli’s trial started, which he likened to a play, since everyone – from the lawyer to the procurators to the judges and to the defendants themselves – had a role to play as they went through the scripted motions and dialogue. The preparations had started two months earlier, with the procurators Aygul and Abdurazaq of the Tianshan District People’s Procuratorate meeting with Abduweli and instructing him regarding his confession. The charges against him, which had started as “false capital contribution” and were later changed to “illegal fundraising”, had now been finalized to “illegal absorption of public deposits”.
Initially, Abduweli refused to sign a confession to this charge, saying that it was an insult to him. Losing his patience, Abdurazaq told him frankly that “this was China”, with the lawyer hired by Abduweli’s brother just an actor who wouldn’t say anything other than what was instructed by the procurators, and would never argue for Abduweli’s innocence. If Abduweli “confessed”, the punishment would be lenient, but if he remained stubborn, they would have to introduce new charges of him opposing the state’s bilingual-education policies, and then he’d get locked up for life. According to Abdurazaq, Abduweli’s brother had come to see them on numerous occasions, causing Abduweli to doubt his stance and finally give in. Signing the confession, he saw Dilyar and Memetsidiq’s signatures there as well.
On July 4, Abduweli, Dilyar, and Memetsidiq were all brought to the courtroom, which was empty except for them, their three lawyers, three procurators, a judge, a clerk, and police. After the three of them answered a few questions, the procurators read their prepared statements, with the lawyers “defending” the three by praising how well they had recognized their crimes. One lawyer in particular quoted some passages from one of their lectures, the content of which was in favor of strengthening and promoting “ethnic unity”. The three of them then had to confirm their “confessions”. So ended the evidence-hearing session, a sort of rehearsal for the actual “trial”.
Afterwards, they had to go to a separate room and sign off on hundreds of pages of “evidence”.
On July 11, 2014, the formal trial was held. This time, the family and relatives of Abduweli, Dilyar, and Memetsidiq were all in attendance, despite Abduweli having told his lawyer earlier that he didn’t want any of his family attending, as it would hurt them to see him in this state.
Abduweli’s brother came dressed in Abduweli’s favorite outfit – white pants and a blue shirt – with his wife, sister, and elderly mother also present. His mother was biting her lip to keep herself under control, and Abduweli could see the blood while his sister held her hand firmly.

Though the trial proceeded as rehearsed, Dilyar surprised everyone when they were asked to confirm that they understood the charges against them, and instead of simply confirming said that he understood everything perfectly this time because it was in their mother tongue, while the previous time had been in Chinese. This devotion to their linguistic cause, even now, invigorated Abduweli. In his own replies to the questions, he made attempts to speak at greater length, despite being instructed to give only “yes” or “no” answers, so that his family could hear his voice for a bit longer.
The trial ended without a verdict and the three were led out, during which time Dilyar’s mother moved in his direction to hug him. The police rudely pushed her away, prompting Dilyar to break free and try to go to her, but only to be kicked to the ground. The atmosphere suddenly grew very tense, with dozens of armed police officers preparing their weapons, but ultimately the tension faded and everything passed without incident, as the three defendants were led off to a separate room to once more sign off and stamp their fingers on endless paperwork.

During this time, a court employee came in and told Abduweli that his mother was extremely proud of him, but hadn’t liked his stating in court that he didn’t know anything about their company’s finances, saying that she had brought him into this world to be a man and to own up to his actions. (What his mother didn’t know was that Abduweli really did have no knowledge of their finances, having occupied himself primarily with speeches and the popularization of their cause.)
As the judicial police was taking Abduweli back to the Liudaowan detention center, they started chatting with him, asking him about a certain inmate named “Zeydulla”, who had recently been released to serve out the rest of his punishment outside. Among the police and some of the inmates, Zeydulla had a notorious reputation and was referred to as a “devil”, not only helping the detention center guards as a translator but also helping them “solve” over 10 cases. A cell boss, he enjoyed multiple privileges and was reviled by the majority of inmates as a foul snitch, with other cell bosses once scolded for failing to “solve” as many cases. Abduweli, too, was told by the police that he had failed to perform as Zeydulla had, despite having the opportunity as a translator.
There had been a period when Zeydulla would have the “cadre meal” ordered for Abduweli on multiple occasions, though each time Abduweli would just pass it on to a Han cellmate. Finally, Zeydulla himself came to the cell and, using the desire to learn English as an excuse, suggested that Abduweli be transferred out of his training cell and to Zeydulla’s cell. However, he quickly let it go after Abduweli mentioned that he was suffering from scabies.
That Zeydulla was allegedly there for bribery was one of the things that had made Abduweli suspicious from the start, as people charged with bribery were usually held at a different detention center. Later, he would also hear that Zeydulla was often being transferred between those cells that had political detainees (so as to gain their trust and then betray them, presumably).
Another similar inmate that Abduweli recalled meeting was someone named Qadir, who despite being from Wusu claimed to speak no Chinese, and despite being a marijuana dealer was labeled as a political inmate, and yet seemed to have no apparent fear of punishment or of the cameras. Qadir would be transferred to Zeydulla’s cell soon after Abduweli was freed from his tasks as a translator, with Qadir and Zeydulla often seen together with Ge Qiang, which only reinforced Abduweli’s suspicions.
Not long after the trial, the guard who had told Abduweli that he would have him transferred to a more lenient cell really did keep his promise. Abduweli was moved to a new cell, with a Han boss who liked to read and generally let the inmates do as they wanted. After two days of sleeping on the floor, Abduweli would be allowed to move up to the raised platform.
This cell was full of both Chinese and Uyghur books, including works by Halide Israyil (Kechmish) and Zordun Sabir (Ana Yurt). For Abduweli, it was a shock to suddenly be able to read and speak in Uyghur, after five months of being forbidden from doing so. As it turned out, the Uyghur books belonged to an inmate named Memetyusup, who had murdered an old Chinese man and was considered insane, with the guards having decided that allowing him to read would help minimize the trouble he might cause otherwise.

Memetyusup was young and well-built, and had been sentenced to death. Though the authorities had let him know that it was possible to go back on the decision if he paid 1.5 million RMB – with Abliz (the boss of the other cell) even offering to help obtain this money – Memetyusup rejected the offer. Given how much he read, Abduweli didn’t believe him to be crazy, as the others who avoided him did. Memetyusup, for his part, largely kept to himself and seemed to avoid Abduweli, before suddenly opening up to him one day and telling Abduweli his story.
Originally from Maralbeshi County, Memetyusup and his younger sister were orphaned at a young age as a result of the 2003 Maralbeshi earthquake, which killed both of their parents. Initially, they remained in the care of their grandmother, but when she passed away would end up staying with various aunts and uncles, until the local Party secretary came and took them to a local welfare home. The place was over overcrowded, and soon a significant portion of the children were sent to Urumqi, while the remainder stayed, spending half a day in class at the welfare home and the other half working as apprentices at the local market.

Memetyusup’s sister was among those sent to Urumqi, which made Memetyusup resolve himself to work hard and learn how to do repair work, so that he could leave Maralbeshi and look after his sister himself. In 2010, he and his teacher moved to Urumqi. There, Memetyusup would spend half the day working with his teacher and the other half driving a “black taxi“, with the goal of finding his sister. Though able to find the orphanage that she had been sent to, he was told that a Han Chinese person had taken her into his care. He was given the person’s address, but this turned out to be a dead end.
One day, he would pick up an old Han client with a missing arm, and after driving him to his home decided to help him carry his things. Upon arriving at the door of the apartment, he almost fell over from shock: inside was a young woman who very much resembled his sister, though she did not recognize him and spoke to him in Chinese. The old man unabashedly told him that she was his wife.
Convinced that it really was her, Memetyusup started stalking the apartment, doing so for a week before finally working up the courage to knock on the door. When he did, he found another couple living there, and would lose track of the old man until one day, while driving his taxi, he suddenly saw the two of them outside in public. When he did, he stopped the car and assaulted the old man, hitting him hard in the head and killing him. Armed police surrounded him and Memetyusup threw himself at them, hoping to be shot, but was instead brought down with a kick and arrested.
In summing up his story, he told Abduweli that what he really killed wasn’t a person but a demon – one who had forced Memetyusup’s sister to marry him under the pretext of adopting her. This would be a secret that he’d take with him to the next world.
Because the new cell was not as strict, smoking was a lot more common here, with the doctors and guards having turned it into an illicit business. The guard whom Abduweli taught English to smoked a lot as well, and the other inmates would often smell his clothes whenever Abduweli returned to the cell, in addition to pressuring him to bring them back cigarettes. For some the addiction was really bad, to the point that they would be willing to confess to new crimes in exchange for a smoke, or would continuously rub the padding material from their clothes or blankets against the concrete so as to make it hot and, wrapping it in toilet paper, smoke that. Those found with cigarettes were punished with transfer back to the training cell, but this did little to deter anyone.
In August 2014, a number of cell bosses were punished because of the cigarette issue, and the illicit business essentially stopped as the administration clamped down on it. Growing more desperate, some of the inmates started threatening Abduweli, telling him not to return from the English lessons if it wasn’t with cigarettes.
One morning towards the end of August, Abduweli was suddenly taken away with a black hood over his head, hearing the familiar guard’s voice behind him tell him to be careful: some of the addicts had snitched on Abduweli as “having strong ethnic sentiments”, and the guard didn’t know where Abduweli was being taken now.

V. KOKTAGH DETENTION CENTER
After being transported and having the hood removed, he found himself in a large hall with hundreds of other inmates, very few of whom were Uyghur. He also saw Memetsidiq, but not Dilyar. This was the Koktagh (Midong) detention center and, judging from the clothing worn by the different inmates, they had been transferred there from a number of different detention centers in Urumqi.
Prior to them being distributed to different cells, the new arrivals all had their blood taken, during which time the nurses would ask them individually if they had any infectious diseases, or if they did drugs or slept with prostitutes, and how often. Hearing some people say that they had AIDS scared Abduweli, as he worried about the needles used for bloodwork being reused without sufficient cleaning. In general, however, there were many people who carried such illnesses in all cells, and it was impossible to isolate oneself from them entirely.
Arriving in his new cell, Abduweli immediately sensed the horrible stench from the toilet, which was located at the end of the raised platform and appeared to be set up over a pit, as had been the case in Kashgar. A strawlike man, who resembled an alien creature and whom Abduweli suspected to be an AIDS victim, sat near the front of the cell. Here, the inmates seemed to be referred to by name, and not by number, with 4 of the 16 wearing the orange uniforms given to political prisoners. Unlike in the previous detention center, there was no shelf for people to keep their cups, bowls, toothbrushes, and other similar utensils on, with these being kept in their individual bed areas instead.

The cell boss, Gheni, made the new arrivals stand facing the wall, first making them recite their alleged crimes and then making them state how much money they had on their internee accounts, after which they’d remain standing there all the way until lunch. During this time, Abduweli noticed a number of things that previous inmates had scratched on the walls, from short romantic verses to calendars checking off their days in detention.
One thing that particularly captured his attention was a faint poem that read:
You are the homeland banished from this earth,
And I, the wanderer who’s lost his way in search of you,
You are the lifeblood of the poplar trees,
And I, the dreams and aspirations that bloom with each spring,
You are the beauty born for me,
And I, the soul that withers, unable to see your face,
You are my kingdom shattered,
And I, the king, his throne and fortune turned to dust.
The poem fascinated Abduweli, and made him wish he could know who had written it.
As lunchtime came, they were freed from facing the wall and given the relevant utensils. To Abduweli, Gheni threw a worn-out bowl that looked more suited for animals, but as Abduweli was preparing to get in line for his soup portion, an Uyghur inmate named Turap stopped him, telling him that that bowl had been used by an ill Han Chinese inmate and that Abduweli should just stick to bread, maybe with boiled water, as skipping on the soup wouldn’t kill him. Taking the advice, Abduweli put the bowl down.
This prompted Gheni to get angry at Turap, who despite being much smaller than Gheni stood up to him and faced him directly. A guard soon came and took Turap away, during which time Turap told Abduweli that he could use his bowl now. He was detained for “causing trouble” and didn’t have any illnesses, he said.
They were then assigned their new places, with Abduweli getting the spot next to the toilet. The Han inmate who had said that he had 3000RMB on his account was given a spot in the front, close to the boss, leading Abduweli to guess at the motivations behind making them announce their finances.
Among the political prisoners were an old man with a thick beard and two young guys, but they would avoid Abduweli’s gaze when he wanted to greet them. The two young inmates would then be assigned to teach Abduweli how to clean the cell, with Gheni having appointed him and a Han Christian detainee to do a week of cleaning.
Because of his proximity to the toilet, nights for Abduweli were miserable, and he would always look forward to the morning. On one occasion, an inmate – someone who had been transferred with him – used the toilet standing up and urinated on Abduweli’s face, causing him to angrily spit in the other’s direction but limit it to that, for fear of waking the others. Because of the stench that emanated from the toilet and the cell getting stuffy between 5 PM and 8 AM each day, the Han inmates had a habit of gathering around a tiny hole in the back door after folding their sheets in the morning, so as to take in any fresh air that they could. By contrast, the Uyghur inmates used this time to wash up and quietly do their ablutions.
As much as Abduweli wanted to try and breathe in some of the fresh air too, he knew that doing so would likely cause a fight, and that the inmate he had spit at would likely use the chance to get revenge also. Many of the internees were already on edge, as the increase in detentions had led to many regular cases being drawn out and taking longer to handle, with the police, procurators, and judges all overworked.
The general order in the cell was like that of the previous detention centers, with them waking up at 6 Beijing time, having two minutes to fold their blankets in military style, washing up, shouting praise to the Party, and then being served breakfast. However, there were no daily inspections of the cell here, with the cell doors and windows being shut for 20 hours a day. Unlike in the previous detention centers, detainees here were allowed to wear their own clothes on the weekends.
Another noticeable difference was the lack of additional activities. There was no exercise session at 10 in the morning, no boiled water given to them once or twice a day, and no Xinjiang Daily ever being delivered (which, though mostly propaganda, Abduweli still appreciated for its literature section, as it occasionally had good poetry). There were no propaganda lessons either, and Abduweli soon found himself missing them, as sitting pointlessly from 8 in the morning to 9 at night was worse. Abduweli’s previous exercise goal, of walking five thousand steps each day, was also impossible to maintain here.

At 4:30 in the afternoon, they would be allowed a break, during which time Abduweli would try to look out a crack in the door to give his eyes some daylight, since he could notice his eyesight getting worse in detention. One such time, he was surprised to hear the sound of pigeon whistles and briefly spotted a flock of pigeons flying by, which reminded him of “Wild Pigeon” – a short story by imprisoned writer Nurmuhemmet Yasin, in which a wild pigeon is tricked into captivity and forced to live with domesticated ones.
In many ways, Abduweli thought of himself the same way. Though he hadn’t been tricked into detention, his identity as a law-abiding intellectual put him in direct contrast with the majority of the inmates, and he could not bring himself to find a common ground with them or to conform to their behavior. He didn’t know anything about the computer games they’d play, hadn’t watched the movies they’d watch, and hadn’t ever heard of the night clubs they’d go to. Though everyone constantly had to recite their alleged crimes, the other inmates did not understand Abduweli’s. And even though they all spoke a common language, they had different vocabularies and different interests, and the others could tell that Abduweli didn’t approve of their lifestyles, and were bothered by his introverted nature. Then there were the occasional sexual acts that the inmates engaged in with one another, which made Abduweli feel even more out of place.
At the same time, he felt that this “wild” nature was also what had helped him in the interrogations, with his refusal to cooperate with the police eventually leading them to drop the political line, only getting him for a financial crime instead.

Starting in early September 2014, the cell’s back door would be closed for the entire 24 hours each day, completely stripping the inmates of fresh air. While the Han inmates used the afternoon breaks to crowd around the back door and try to get some air through the small holes, Abduweli used this time to walk back and forth across the floor-level portion of the cell. Eventually, other Uyghur inmates – some with their fetters – took to following him, which initially raised eyebrows but gradually became routine, with some of the Han and Hui joining also. The boss, Gheni, would not join them and occasionally warned them not to chat in Uyghur during this time, but sometimes got distracted with reading a book and didn’t bother.
It was during one of these times, at the end of September, that the Uyghur inmates started arguing about when Qurban Eid was (a common issue because of time zones and it being celebrated by Muslims internationally). As the debate got more intense and opinions diverged, Abduweli decided to stop and go wash up, fearing a repeat of what had happened before with the “halal and haram” argument. However, a number of cellmates now called them out for speaking Uyghur and, using this as an excuse, proceeded to gang up on some of the inmates and beat them. One of the political prisoners, Hajiekber, couldn’t defend himself because of his restraints and was badly beaten, while Abduweli was punched in the head and had his glasses broken. In desperation, he cried out that someone had died, prompting guards to enter the cell.
When they did and asked for an explanation, the inmates who had done the beating simply told them that the Uyghur inmates had spoken Uyghur. As a result, the guard ordered Hajiekber to stand facing the wall for the entire night as punishment. The remaining Uyghurs were deprived of dinner that evening, and ordered to remain awake until 3 AM.

In early October 2014, Abduweli’s name was called through the intercom and he was informed that he was going to another court hearing, as someone in their group of three had appealed. This time, there was none of the rehearsal or preparations that had taken place the time before, and no meetings with the lawyer. Once more, Abduweli would be hooded, handcuffed, and fettered as he was taken to the courthouse. As before, he, Dilyar, and Memetsidiq were brought in one by one and held by police officers on both sides, who pressed on their necks and lined them up in front of the judge. A clerk and procurator were also present.
As it turned out, Dilyar and Memetsidiq had both filed an appeal, with Memetsidiq taking on the role of the lawyer. After the initial trial, he had researched the law with regard to the charges against them, which included finding examples of similar cases and how the defendants there had been treated. He now argued that not only were the three of them innocent, but should also be paid reparations for being illegally detained. The judge replied by looking at the procurator, who simply looked down and read once more the same indictment from the first trial.
When given his turn to speak, Abduweli talked about how their confessions for the previous trial had been obtained through deception, torture, and threats, with the procurators having scared him by saying that the case would be turned into a political one with a potential life sentence if he didn’t confess. Dilyar followed by saying the same, and saying that their rights had been trampled on. The judge didn’t interrupt.
The session didn’t go much longer, with the judge asking if they had any final words. Without the slightest hesitation, Dilyar spoke up and said:
“Actually, the interrogators, procurators, and judges working on our ‘case’… You’ve worked really hard. You’ve worked earnestly. And you’ve gone through a lot of trouble. But what all of you have been working for has not been the law – you’ve been carrying out a political order. What Memetsidiq said today has been written down by the clerk, with all of us here witnesses. It’s been retained for history, and has been recorded for the video archives. There will come a day when the law stands supreme and justice shines. On that day, our places will surely switch. I believe in that.”
The words made such a deep impression on Abduweli that he didn’t end up paying attention to what Memetsidiq said afterwards. When his own turn came, he decided to use it to learn who from his family had attended that day, as he could not see well without his glasses.
Looking at the female judge, he said:
“I’ve been in detention for over a year. According to the detention center rules, I had the right to see my family, but that wasn’t honored either. I would like to see who from my family came to the courtroom today, and if any of my friends are here. Unfortunately, my glasses were broken when I was punished for speaking Uyghur in the cell. If you could be so kind as to give me a pair of glasses, I’d like to see who from my family came.”
After he said this, he heard his brother’s voice shout out:
“Abduweli! Little brother, I’m here! Here are your glasses!”
As he turned around, he saw a silhouette start to approach him, with the two policemen that held him reacting immediately – one forcing Abduweli to look forward while the other yelled at his brother, telling him that it was not permitted to deliver the glasses and ordering him to stand still.
Here, the judge interrupted and said that it was her decision if the glasses could be handed over or not, and ordered for them to be given to Abduweli. This gave him a small feeling of victory – while they would ultimately lose the appeal, at least he had been able to “win” his glasses back.
At the end of October, there would be another incident in their cell, this time involving the Han Christian extremist, Wang. A Henan native, he was interned for setting fire to the largest Buddhist temple in Urumqi [a well-documented incident from September 2013, when the Qingquan Temple lost its main hall]. Despite the “extremist” label, Wang was often considered a “fake extremist” by the Uyghur inmates, since he neither wore the orange jacket, nor had his feet shackled, nor appeared to live in the same fear as the regular political prisoners accused of the same. (In Abduweli’s experience, the orange jacket seemed almost exclusively reserved for Uyghur inmates, as neither the Han Christians, nor the Han who had been arrested for posting online about the innocent Uyghurs taken following an incident in Lukchun, nor the Hui who had been taken for praying with Uyghurs outside a crowded mosque had worn them, despite being held on the same charges.)

While Wang didn’t get along with the other inmates and was often ridiculed by them (they considered him crazy or brainwashed), he did end up becoming good friends with a Wuhan university student named Sidiq, who had been detained on the pretext of “inciting others to Hijrat with videos from abroad”. The two often washed clothes together, gave each other shoulder massages, and – as it sounded to Abduweli – used the propaganda television sessions to chat and try to convert each other to their respective faiths. The friendship was an odd one, since Wang was older and seemed quite narrow in his views. Despite having moved to Urumqi as a child, he still retained his Henanese accent, in addition to showing absolutely no interest in the Uyghur people he lived among, to the point of not even having tried their food once. Sidiq, on the other hand, had been a student at one of China’s famous universities and spoke both English and Chinese.
One day, there was a sudden major inspection of the cell, as two police officers entered and stood guard with automatic rifles while the inmates stripped naked and went to the outdoor area, standing against the wall. Such inspections, done every week or two, were aimed at checking for cigarettes, lighters, drugs, and any sharp objects, and often only involved the Kazakh guard asking them about it. This time, however, he asked them to open their hands, which prompted Wang to pass something to Sidiq, with Sidiq putting it in his mouth. Abduweli noticed this, as did the guard, who then proceeded to kick Sidiq down, with Sidiq swallowing the object. As a result, everyone had their mouths inspected, and in some cases were forced to spit out whatever they might have had. The whole thing lasted around an hour, while they stood naked in the October cold.

In the end, Sidiq was punished on the suspicion of having swallowed a cigarette to hide it, and was transferred to a different cell. Everyone else was punished for not having informed the guards about it, being deprived of dinner that evening and forced to remain awake, sitting at attention until 3 in the morning.
The deputy director of the Midong detention center was Kazakh, as were some of the guards. This elicited a certain spite from some of the Han inmates, who, even if educated, seemed to carry with them a good deal of the bias and stereotypes regarding those from other ethnic groups (such as Uyghurs being “knife-carrying savages who made kebab” and Kazakhs being “dirty people who lived in the grasslands and never bathed”). There was one guard in particular who became the target of their anger and derision because of the heel reinforcements that he wore on his boots, which were more common in the countryside and would make a very loud noise whenever he walked through the hall, allowing the political prisoners to know in advance that guards were coming and to prepare accordingly to avoid punishment.
This was welcomed by those like Abduweli. Taking advantage of the noise during his night shifts, he’d place the political inmates’ orange jackets over their bodies to make it look like they had them on, as this was mandated by the rules but something that many tried to avoid doing, since the jackets made it too hot to sleep. At the same time, many of the Han inmates hated the noise, which would wake them up in the middle of the night, and compared it to the hooves of a horse or donkey. This guard was also polite to the Uyghur inmates, speaking to them in Uyghur.
As in previous detention centers, Abduweli’s knowledge of English and other languages helped him win some favor with the staff and cellmates, and the Kazakh guard would always be calling him to help out with any English translations, making Abduweli wonder if it was written in his file that he had previously helped out with translations for a Pakistani detainee at one of the other detention centers.
Once, the Kazakh guard came and asked him to explain what “Halid, Seyf, Silah” meant in Arabic, as this was tattooed on one political prisoner’s arm in what the police considered to be a major case. Halid was a reference to Khalid ibn al-Walid, while seyf and silah meant “weapon” and “sword”, but Abduweli decided not to say this, as the police would have interpreted it as a call to jihad. Instead, he told the Kazakh guard that these were all just people’s names, and probably the names of the inmate’s girlfriends. When the Kazakh guard asked if they might be the names of Islamic heroes or religious leaders, Abduweli told him that they had nothing to do with religion, adding that there were also Christians among Arabs and that names like these could even be encountered among such groups as the Yazidis. This surprised the guard, who had believed all Arabs to be Muslim. They then chatted some more about Arabs, with the guard also asking Abduweli about his own case. Later, he also brought Abduweli a book about education, psychology, and sociology.
As a result, the other inmates started to be nicer to Abduweli – the Han and Hui because they assumed that if the guard could bring Abduweli a book, he could sneak in cigarettes as well, and the Uyghurs because of Abduweli being able to read “Quranic script” (Arabic). One inmate in particular, a 50-year-old native of Kashgar’s Beshkirem, Tursun Sawur, took such a liking to Abduweli that he gifted him the Nike athletic outfit that relatives had sent him. Abduweli used it as a pillow – since they didn’t have real pillows – and would then wear it on the weekends, escaping from the detention clothes for the first time. Tursun was a businessman who had come to Urumqi at a young age, and after many years of struggle finally succeeded and got rich. However, this success was undone when he was detained, for having gone with his wife on an unsanctioned Hajj.
One day, people from the prison inspection committee came to their cell, again making everyone strip naked and go out in the cold. After some time had passed, they seemed to take pity on the prisoners and gave them permission to get dressed. They then asked them if they had any requests. At this point, an inmate who was serving a life sentence for drug trafficking spoke up and started complaining about the Kazakh guard with the noisy boots, talking about how it made sleeping difficult, how political prisoners would take advantage of it to not wear their vests or avoid punishment in general, and how the guard also spoke in Uyghur and brought Uyghur books. As a result, surveillance increased, with all political inmates forced to sleep in their jackets, while the sound of the reinforced heels vanished from that day on.
As a month passed since the trial but with no verdict issued, Abduweli grew weary and frustrated, with life at the detention center becoming increasingly unbearable. It was the same for many others, and in some cases inmates would even “confess” to crimes they never committed just to be transferred to prison sooner, which in their eyes was a paradise by comparison – where they could work in a factory, eat as much as they needed, and be relatively comfortable during their time off. The authorities appeared to accommodate such sentiments, with all the detention centers that Abduweli had been in consistently showing at 10 PM on Sundays a program about inmates who regretted their crimes, came forward, and confessed to the police or interrogators. Some inmates cursed the “protagonists” of this program as being the worst of idiots, while others viewed this outcome as inevitable.
Nejmidin, a cellmate from Turpan who had spent over 2 years in pre-trial detention because the police couldn’t find anything on him, appeared to have fallen into this trap. When Abduweli looked at the indictment Nejmidin had just been given, he recognized it as being an exact copy of the contents from the program they had just watched the previous week, leading him to guess at the purpose of these programs. Not too long after, Nejmidin would be transferred to prison.
At the same time, there were other inmates who categorically resisted all cooperation with the investigators. One of these was a 20-year-old Hui named Hai Xiaoyang, who had been in detention for two and a half years. Abduweli’s first impression of him was that of a spoiled brat, who had studied in university, wore his own clothes in the cell, and generally did what he liked, looking down on the other Han and Hui as uneducated, while hating the Uyghur political prisoners because he viewed them all as violent terrorists (to the point of shouting at them whenever there was news of a violent incident that took place somewhere in Xinjiang). Of his cellmates, Abduweli was the only one he really talked to, with Abduweli starting to teach him English at one point.
For their lessons, Abduweli would often prepare short texts and stories, churning out to his own surprise a great array of different anecdotes about his father, which Xiaoyang really liked. Later, Abduweli started to prepare texts about political prisoners as well, of which a notable case was their cellmate Ablimit. An orphan from Lop County, Ablimit was being held on suspicion of having made a flag that was used during the May 22 Urumqi market bombing. The guards had tasked Abduweli with writing Ablimit’s appeal letter.
When Ablimit was 8, he lost his mother to a car accident, causing him to not go to school and to help his three younger brothers assist their sickly father at home instead. One day, not long after the funeral, while Ablimit was sitting down to eat noodles, a hen came in and started pestering him. Unable to make it go away, he picked up a rolling pin and took a swing at it, unintentionally killing it. After realizing what he had done, he started to cry and went outside, to be followed by his three brothers, who didn’t understand what was happening but put on the white girdles they had already worn for their mother’s funeral, walking with him around the neighborhood as they all cried. The sight led their neighbors to conclude that their father must have died also, prompting everyone to make haste and hurry to the home with a bier, only to find that it was the chicken.
Expecting Xiaoyang to find the story humorous, Abduweli was surprised to see him crying. Xiaoyang then told Abduweli that he knew what Abduweli was trying to do – to defend the political prisoners – and recognized that these stories were very different from the images in his head. Having always believed them to be terrorists, Xiaoyang hadn’t even gone to the Nanmen area of Urumqi, on the border with a major Uyghur district, for this reason. He then told Abduweli that he was an orphan too, a product of a marriage between a Han father and a Hui mother that had failed because the Hui community did not accept marrying Hui women to Han men. Too young to remember his father, he was raised by his mother and grandfather, with only an old tape player of songs that his father had recorded for him left as the latter’s memory.
From the next day on, Xiaoyang started being nicer to Ablimit, joking and chatting with him and even starting to teach him Chinese.
As more and more people were beginning to be transferred to serve their prison terms (many of them eager to do so), Xiaoyang grew worried, fearing that he would not be able to continue his English studies in prison, with all this effort in the detention center having gone to waste. However, it turned out that it was possible to engage in self-study and obtain certain course certificates even while in prison, which put Xiaoyang at ease.
Unfortunately, political prisoners did not have such opportunities. Hajiekber, a young political prisoner from Tashkorgan who had been studying at a computer school in Urumqi and was detained because of a chat software that a friend had sent him over Kot-Kot (an Uyghur analogue of QQ), would often learn from Abduweli in secret. After Xiaoyang went to bed, Hajiekber would take Xiaoyang’s notebook and memorize the texts that Abduweli had prepared. Later, while using the toilet next to Abduweli’s sleeping space, he would quietly recite the texts to Abduweli and have Abduweli correct him. No one knew about this arrangement, and many found it odd that Abduweli kept finding excuses to refuse moving to a better sleeping space closer to the entrance. While teaching Xiaoyang, Abduweli would also make sure to repeat things many times, aware that Hajiekber was listening.
On November 20, 2014, Xiaoyang and Abduweli had their last lesson, as Xiaoyang’s name was called and he was taken for transfer to the No. 4 Prison to serve his term. Much to Hajiekber’s consternation, Xiaoyang took his English notebook with him, and as much as Abduweli wanted to tell him to leave it there for Hajiekber to use, he couldn’t.
Later that day, Abduweli’s name was also called, with the guard passing the handcuffs and fetters through the slot in the door and leading him down the hall, but without a black hood over his head. Eventually, Abduweli found himself in front of a young man and woman from the Urumqi City Intermediate People’s Court, who told him that they were there to release him, asked for his restraints to be removed, and asked him to sign the release form. Certain that they had made a mistake, Abduweli told them that this couldn’t be right, as he still had another three months left on his sentence. He was then informed that his sentence had been shortened from 18 months to 15, with the woman growing impatient and calling Abduweli’s brother, after which she handed over the phone and let the two of them talk.
VI. DEPARTURE
Leaving the detention center, Abduweli took some time to get his bearings in the cold November Urumqi weather, and then got into the designated vehicle with the two court staff. Eventually, the driver struck up a conversation with him, telling him that Abduweli didn’t look like someone who had just been in detention. Abduweli told him that he had written three books in his head during this time, and then started telling him about them. They then arrived at the court building.
Freed, Abduweli would say a prayer for the cellmates left behind. At the same time, he made the decision to forget what happened and to move on, instead of holding on to such dark sentiments as hate and revenge, choosing to throw them out together with the prison shoes that he had left the detention center in. Forgiving the individuals, the only thing he didn’t forgive was the cruel system itself.
The next day, he returned to Kashgar and reunited with his family. Overwhelmed by his return, his mother broke into tears during dinner that evening, which reminded Abduweli of Emetqari, his first cellmate from the detention center in Kashgar. Emetqari had also talked to Abduweli about his elderly mother, now over 70, and had asked Abduweli to go see his wife and children. Believing that Abduweli would be released soon, he had wanted him to tell his wife that she and the children would be able to see him if she filed for divorce, and to use that as an excuse to see each other. A few days later, Abduweli headed out in the direction of Emetqari’s village.

Upon arrival, he hesitated, fearing that his visit might only bring more trouble to the family, but finally decided to press on and try to find them. When he entered the village, he found the entire population gathered in the central yard for a political meeting, with a guard approaching Abduweli to ask why he was there and to ask for his ID. Having already learned that his ID was now sensitive and could result in short-term detention and punishment if the guard were to put it through his handheld device, Abduweli found himself in a tight spot – neither presenting his ID nor telling the guard why he was there was a safe option. Instead, he lied and said that he was a government cadre paying the village a visit, which with Abduweli’s glasses and intellectual appearance seemed to pass. Since entering still would have required him to hand over his ID, he remained outside and watched the meeting from there, while pretending to be waiting for someone.
After the political meeting ended, there started a series of dance performances, where the elderly men were beardless and the elderly women were without headscarves, going through the motions in a way that made it clear to Abduweli that they were suffering. Next came the individual performances, which, as Abduweli learned from a guard, were delivered by the “focus households”. When Abduweli asked him if there was anyone from Emetqari’s family there, the guard motioned to the stage and told him that Emetqari was the son of the woman who was on now.
Emetqari’s mother started by telling everyone that she would recite the “Era of Liberation” song/poem for them. However, she couldn’t force herself to do it, and would start crying, saying “Why can’t I just die? Why can’t I die and find salvation? Let me die, let me die, let me die for having come into this world as a person, let me die for having given birth to a child!”
Abduweli bit his lip and looked at the gun that the nearby guard was holding. Since being released from detention, he sometimes had the desire to wrest the gun from the police he came across and use it, but never dared, as the thought of leaving his wife, children, and family alone stopped him.
Feeling that his presence was starting to catch people’s attention, he walked away from the yard and ultimately headed back, afraid that a visit to a “focus household” from himself (a “focus individual”) would only make things worse.
About a week after Abduweli’s release, his wife discovered a letter in the athletic suit that Tursun Sawur had gifted Abduweli while she was preparing to wash it (in general, Abduweli’s wife didn’t let him wear it at home, since he had worn it when released and she associated it with his detention). Looking through the suit, Abduweli saw a note written directly on the fabric inside one of the pockets, addressed to Tursun from his eldest son. In it, the son wrote that it had already been 187 days since Tursun’s detention, but that the family had come to terms with it, and that he shouldn’t worry about them. There were many problems – from his mother’s grief, to the siblings going hungry from there not being food in the fridge, to his teacher having also been detained – but the son was resolved to work hard to make things better, going to the market daily and studying English on the bus there and back. He finished by sharing the news that he had just become a qari, like Tursun had always wanted. There was more, but it was illegible, and Abduweli couldn’t find anything else in the other parts of the suit.
A few days later, Abduweli was able to find Tursun’s older brother, visiting him and sharing the news that Tursun was in detention and healthy, with them both lamenting that the son’s message never reached him.
With the level of surveillance, repression, military presence, and forced indoctrination having increased significantly (since the start of the “People’s War on Terror”), Abduweli found the Kashgar he returned to immensely different from what he had been used to before. Though he would work night and day to finish the three books he had planned, the idea of going and publishing them now was out of the question.
ID checks became frequent, with airport-level security control points being set up in numerous parts of the city, and it was impossible for him to go 500 meters inside Kashgar City without being subjected to one. Immediately after returning home, he took to giving lessons at a language school his wife taught at, and would run into the security checks daily. Because he had been in detention, his ID was flagged in the system and would usually set off an alarm.
His first incident with the police took place just three days after his release, when he was taken into the Ostengboyi Police Station close to the Id Kah Mosque and kept in a cage for 4 hours, while police looked through his computer and phone, but found nothing. A police officer named Qurbanjan then let him out, but led him straight to the toilet, implying that he clean it as punishment. An armed police officer with his finger on the trigger stood nearby.

Losing his temper, Abduweli exploded and shouted at the officer, telling him to shoot, since he had a gun and could always say it was because Abduweli had refused to clean the toilet, while adding that the officer could come to his home and clean his toilet, with Abduweli giving him the right and even offering to pay double whatever salary the government was paying. Qurbanjan then moved the barrel of the gun towards the floor while aggressively coming at Abduweli, but was stopped when another officer – a friend of Abduweli’s brother – ran in and reminded Qurbanjan who Abduweli was, after which they promptly let him go.
Hoping to escape this, Abduweli took to going to the rural areas more, especially if there was something he could do to help his former cellmates. But while the police presence was weaker there, each village now had its own “training” area, where people would be forced to undergo indoctrination that was similar in content to what Abduweli had been forced to watch on the detention-center television. Political meetings and shows, as what Abduweli had seen in Emetqari’s village, were also standard practice now.

He concluded that he had to leave, but couldn’t think of a way to do it. One possibility was to have his wife and kids go to Japan, to settle there, and to then invite him, which would simplify the procedure. However, the times to go through the asylum procedures were too slow, and it would be a matter of years. There were also invitations for Abduweli from Turkey and the US, but he didn’t believe that China would let him out of the country without an ironclad reason justifying why he absolutely had to make the trip.
Deciding to first try leaving the Kashgar prefecture, Abduweli went on a trip to Hotan in June 2015, but found the experience of crossing from Kashgar’s Qaghiliq County into Hotan to be on par with entering a different country. During the process, Abduweli was flagged without even taking out his ID (possibly through facial recognition), with two armed soldiers temporarily detaining him in a separate room.
On July 6, 2015, he was detained following a check in Kashgar again and held for 7 hours, during which time he was beaten by an officer named Ablikim. When Abduweli told him that beating people was against the law, Ablikim told him that he had already beat him, and would beat him some more, since there he was the law and could do to Abduweli whatever he liked. Deciding to confirm for a final time whether there was any rule of law in Kashgar, Abduweli filed a legal case against Ablikim to multiple security and government departments, but was soon told by a worker named Abdukerim, from the Kashgar City Domestic-Security Brigade’s inspection department, that he should drop the case. Otherwise, they would detain his brother and any friends that Abduweli and his brother might have had in the police. Abduweli had no choice but to withdraw the case.
In the middle of August 2015, police came to the home that Abduweli was renting in Kashgar City, telling him that he was not welcome in this neighborhood and should leave, as he had a criminal record and as his household registration was elsewhere. Abduweli then thought of going to Lanzhou, where his registration was, but was told by contacts there that he wouldn’t be allowed to stay in Lanzhou either because of his criminal record. His wife’s registration was in Urumqi, but she was forbidden from renting an apartment for Abduweli there. On August 13, 2015, the police from Kashgar’s Chasa Police Station came and sealed their home, forcing them to leave.
His wife then took the children and went to her mother’s home, while Abduweli went to his mother’s. However, this too was precarious, since they were not registered there either. The “ten households” community surveillance measures were already in place (where each ten households would have a resident appointed to monitor them), in addition to each building having a “tips box” for people to report religious and other “illegal” activities. The consequences involved the household being labeled as “focus”, which resulted in utilities being cut. Those found to be living somewhere “illegally” could also be subjected to 15 days of overnight “education”, with the children sent to an orphanage. Given their circumstances, it was only a matter of time before Abduweli and his family would be reported, and they couldn’t take the risk.
On August 23, 2015, Abduweli’s wife informed him that a business group from the autonomous region health department was going to Turkey, with another friend calling Abduweli to tell him that he could join the group as a translator. Certain that he wouldn’t be let out of the country, Abduweli nevertheless decided to give it a try, just to check his status, and left for the airport on August 25, 2015, after saying half-hearted goodbyes to his wife and children, while telling his mother that he would return in 10 days if he ended up going.
At the airport, the entire group went through inspection without issue, with only Abduweli being pulled aside. First, he was asked about his criminal record, and was then told that there were two people with his name and info in the system: one from Toqquzaq, in Konasheher County, and one from Lanzhou, where Abduweli had worked. The photo for the Toqquzaq record was dark and murky, and – fearing that contact with the local Kashgar authorities would result in his being barred from leaving – Abduweli denied it as being him, saying instead that he was a teacher in Lanzhou. As he was on good terms with the police in Lanzhou and as there was another Abduweli there who was often mixed up with him, the thought of them contacting the police there didn’t bother him, as the Lanzhou authorities were unlikely to say anything negative about him.
Eventually, with the plane about to leave, Abduweli was told that he could go, though he didn’t immediately understand where: to Kashgar to delete the other record, or to Istanbul? Soon, however, one of the airport staff ran up to him with his bag, urging him to hurry before the plane left.
