Ziawudun told the BBC the camp spent hours singing patriotic songs and watching patriotic TV programs about Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A former camp guard who spoke on the condition of anonymity,but had his details corroborated by the BBC,said he saw detainees being forced to memorise books to pass loyalty tests. The detainees would wear different colours depending on how many times they had failed,and would be subject to increasingly severe punishments including food deprivation and beatings.
“I entered those camps. I took detainees into those camps,” he said. “I saw those sick,miserable people. They definitely experienced various types of torture. I am sure about that.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian has repeatedly dismissed allegations of persecution,torture and sterilisation as part of an international campaign against China.
“The so-called ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang is a completely false accusation,a lie concocted by some anti-China forces and a farce staged to smear and defile China,” he said last week.
Labor senator Kimberley Kitching said the BBC’s report showed “some of the most horrific and unspeakable human rights abuses” we have seen in recent memory.
“The weight of evidence steadily coming out of the Xinjiang region leaves no room for doubt as to the oppression Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are living under,” she said. ”Despite the CCP’s constant denials,the international community can no longer be idle in the face of this brutal repression.”
Liberal senator James Paterson said the reports were “profoundly distressing”.
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“The ongoing systemic mistreatment of the Uighur people by the Chinese Communist Party is an affront to universal values of human dignity and must be resolutely condemned by the world,” he said.
Paterson and Kitching are co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China,a group of up to 200 MPs in Europe,the US and the Indo-Pacific that have criticised the Asian giant’s growing power and condemned its human rights abuses.
The alliance called for a UN-led investigation of crimes against humanity.
“The time for mere words has long passed,” the joint statement said. “We must now move towards a co-ordinated effort to hold the Chinese government to account. These atrocities must be stopped.”
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Human Rights Watch Australia director Elaine Pearson backed the call for UN investigators to be sent in.
”For years,Human Rights Watch has documented the Chinese government’s mass arbitrary detention,torture,forced political indoctrination,and mass surveillance of Xinjiang’s Muslims,” she said. “Meanwhile,Chinese authorities continue to enjoy impunity for systematic rights violations in Xinjiang.”
Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said “anyone reading these women’s testimonies would be disgusted by what they were subjected to”.
“This evidence is counter to China’s international human rights obligations and is not consistent with the behaviour of a respected and responsible international power,” she said.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne was contacted for comment.
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