Description
By (author) Haitiwaji, Gulbahar; By (author) Morgat, Rozenn; Translated by Gauvin Edward
Short /annotation
For three years, she endured hundreds of hours of interrogation, torture, hunger, police violence, cold, and rats. Her name is Gulbahar Haitiwaji and she is the first Uyghur woman survivor of Chinese re-education camps to give a connected and detailed account of what happens there.
”Intimate, highly sensory” &&&&& – Daily Telegraph
”Indispensable” – Sunday Times
”Harrowing” – New Statesman
”A powerful personal narrative” – Irish Times
THE FIRST MEMOIR ABOUT THE ”RE-EDUCATION” CAMPS BY A UYGHUR WOMAN
For three years, Gulbahar Haitiwaji disappeared into a secret network of jails.
Now, she is the first female Uyghur survivor to give a connected and revealing account of life inside China’s brainwashing ‘re-education’ camps. Her account reads like a modern version of 1984. It tells the story of a woman confronted by an all-powerful state bent on crushing her spirit – and her struggle for freedom and dignity.
This rare portrait of China’s gulag is visceral and internationally important.
”An intimate, highly sensory self-portrait… of an educated woman passing through a system that appears at turns cruel, paranoid, capricious and devastatingly effective.” – Daily Telegraph
”Gulbahar”s memoir is an indispensable account, which makes vivid the stench of fearful sweat in the cells, the newly built prison’s permanent reek of white paint. It closely corresponds with other witness statements… Most impressive is her psychological honesty.” – Sunday Times
Table of contents
Map of Xianjiang
Preface
Family tree
Chapter 1. A Family Wedding
Chapter 2. China Calling
Chapter 3. A Police Interview
Chapter 4. Communist Party Glories
Chapter 5. Shackled to a Bed
Chapter 6. Inside Cell 202
Chapter 7. ‘School’ with Xi Jinping
Chapter 8. Nadira Vanishes
Chapter 9. A Reunion with Hope
Chapter 10. ‘Re-education’ is Working
Chapter 11. Losing Body and Mind
Chapter 12. World Discovers the Camps
Chapter 13. France Discovers Gulbahar
Chapter 14. Moved to a Bigger Camp
Chapter 15. ‘No 9. Your Turn!’
Chapter 16. Where is Gulbahar?
Chapter 17. Letting Myself Die
Chapter 18. Battles With Tasqin
Chapter 19. Freedom?
Chapter 20. Fruit and Mint Tea
Chapter 21. Phoning Home
Chapter 22. Monitored All Day
Chapter 23. Back in Karamay
Chapter 24. Cooking for Secret Police
Chapter 25. The Truth is Voiceless
Chapter 26. Closing My File
Chapter 27. Landing
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Review quote
”Huge efforts have been made to obfuscate the realities of life in the camps (even speaking openly in Xinjiang about them can lead to incarceration). Although their existence has been well documented abroad and grudgingly admitted by the Chinese state, relatively few first-hand accounts of what actually goes on inside them have emerged. One is Gulbahar Haitiwaji”s moving and devastating How I Survived a Chinese ”Re-education” Camp”.
Review quote
”There follows an intimate, highly sensory self-portrait, created with the help of Rozenn Morgat (a journalist with Le Figaro), of an educated woman passing through a system that appears at turns cruel, paranoid, capricious and devastatingly effective. It begins with the confiscation of Haitiwaji”s passport and a police interrogation during which she is shown a photograph of her daughter attendin
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