Inside Xinjiang’s Prison State
February 26, 2021Otarbai learned that the police had found WhatsApp, a messaging client that is blocked in China, on his phone. Otarbai protested that the app was common in Kazakhstan, where he now lived. The officers asked if he knew what he had saved in his WhatsApp account. Otarbai immediately understood what they meant. In Koktokay, he’d told the police that he didn’t pray regularly. Now he remembered that there were a few videos of imams preaching and inspirational images related to the practice of praying five times a day. “I know there is some religious instruction,” he told them. “I know it is there.”
That fall, in an improvised courtroom inside the camp, Otarbai was convicted and sentenced in a pro-forma process that only vaguely resembled a trial. There was no defense; a representative from his old neighborhood administration read out a verdict stating that he “has been confirmed to have used WhatsApp, and is thus given a seven-year sentence.”