Uighur Woman Says She Was Tortured in Chinese Internment Camp

A member of the China's Uighur minority told reporters in Washington Monday her story of being tortured in Chinese internment camps, the Associated Press reports. Mihrigul Tursun, 29, claimed that she was imprisoned three times solely because she was a member of the ethnic group, whose members are mostly Muslims. She said she was first imprisoned for three months in 2015 and separated from her then infant triplets. One of the children died, she said, while the other two developed health problems and were “operated on.” Tursun also said she was “interrogated for four days in a row without sleep” after her second arrest in 2017. Seven months later, she said she was arrested again and forced to stay in a “cramped” prison cell with about 60 other women. Tursun said she was electrocuted repeatedly, given “unknown medication” that caused fainting and bleeding, and forced to sing songs praising China’s Communist Party. She said nine women died in her cell during her final three-month imprisonment. “I thought that I would rather die than go through this torture and begged them to kill me,” Tursun told reporters. The Chinese government has denied the Uighur internment camps exist, and said the structures housing members of the group are “employment training centers.”