t disagreement with the party line — let alone having relatives abroad — brings terrifying retribution. Intrusive, random and ubiquitous repression combines high-tech surveillance with hooded abduction, interrogation, beatings and humiliation. Three million people in East Turkestan have been consigned to a network of 1,200 camps, including slave-labour facilities in faraway parts of China. Those outside this latter-day gulag live in constant fear and humiliation. […]
China’s repression in East Turkestan combines North Korean levels of compliance, racism reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Kafkaesque vindictiveness. To survive the self-criticism sessions you have to invent shortcomings. But these can then be used against you. Sexual abuse is endemic, even outside the camps. Indigenous women are allocated at random to Chinese men for eight days a month. Sauytbay escapes that by paying a bribe. Greed corrodes even the most ruthless system.
Corruption was also her way out. The camp authorities send Sauytbay home, abruptly. Almost immediately she receives warning that she is due to be arrested and returned as an inmate. She bribes her way to the free-trade zone on the Kazakh frontier, and crawls under a border checkpoint while the guard is distracted. It could be true. If she actually used an underground escape route for fugitives, she is wise not to write about it.
While Kazakhstan is an autocracy, heavily beholden to its giant neighbour, people there enjoy enough political freedom to kick up a public fuss when the authorities try to extradite her. After lengthy legal battles, she and her family get political asylum in Sweden and enjoy international acclaim. But her torments continue. Her health is ruined. Menacing phone calls tell her to shut up. The authorities send her sister and mother to the camps to underline their point. “It’s my fault,” she writes. No it’s not.
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