Mandatory Indoctrination Classes For Unemployed Uyghurs in Xinjiang
February 07, 2018The officers told RFA that on the morning of Jan. 28, a Uyghur named Tursun Ablet had hanged himself at his home in Tomosteng’s No. 1 village because his class administrator had threatened to sentence him to a re-education camp for up to five years if he didn’t learn how to recite China’s national anthem in Mandarin Chinese instead of his native Uyghur language by the following day . . . on the morning of Jan. 25, about 200 people aged 16 to 45 attended a training course at Bagh Hoyla Family Committee Hall, and that 17 people in the class—including Ablet—were unable to recite the national anthem when asked to stand and do so. The head of the Family Committee, Mehmet Tursun Mahmut, told the group that if they could not learn to recite both the national anthem and the Oath of Allegiance to the Communist Party by Jan. 29, he would “send us to a re-education camp for between six months and five years.” . . . Mahmut berated the attendees who had failed to recite the anthem on Jan. 25 and threatened to send them to a re-education camp, calling them “stupid, ignorant donkeys.”