Born in 1966 in Ghulja in the Xinjiang region, Gulbahar Haitiwaji was an executive in the Chinese oil industry before leaving for France in 2006 with her husband and children, who obtained the status of political refugees. In 2017 she was summoned in China for an administrative issue. Once there, she was arrested and spent more than two years in a reeducation camp. Thanks to the efforts of her family and the French foreign ministry she was freed and was able to return to France where she currently resides.
"The book is most valuable as testimony. For Uyghurs, Haitiwaji
explains, the camps are “a kind of urban legend,” made mythic by
silence: “If no one talks about them, then the camps aren’t real.”
Her memoir, dedicated “to all those who didn’t make it out,”
contributes to a rich and painful body of memory-keeping that grows
all the time."
—Jamie Fisher, The New York Times
"[A] powerful, heart-wrenching memoir."
—Elizabeth M. Lynch, Commonweal
"A viscerally affecting memoir from a Uyghur woman who “endured
hundreds of hours of interrogation, torture, malnutrition, police
violence, and brainwashing. . . . A taut, moving, powerful
account of an ongoing human rights disaster."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"After being imprisoned for nearly three years, Haitiwaji, a member
of the Uighur community, details in this rousing and courageous
debut the brutal treatment she survived in one of China’s
“reeducation” camps. Structured like a diary, her narrative begins
in August 2016 at her daughter’s wedding in Paris, a celebration
that’s tinged with sadness because those in attendance are living
in exile, having left China after a crackdown against a growing
movement for Uighur autonomy. A few months later, Haitiwaji was
summoned to China, ostensibly to resolve a pension matter, and
detained by government authorities. With her daughter accused of
terrorism (she was seen holding a flag representing Uighur
independence at a Paris protest), Haitiwaji was imprisoned,
shackled to her bed for 20 days, and relentlessly interrogated. Her
story grows more disturbing when she recalls the repeated violence
and 11 hours of daily “education” she received over the next two
years once she was sent to “school”: “this was brainwashing, whole
days spent repeating the same idiot phrases.” Haitiwaji’s
forthright descriptions of her harrowing experience at a modern-day
concentration camp—before she was released in 2019 with the help of
her daughter—offers a sobering look at the horrific ways genocide
is still being enacted today. This urgent testimony will serve as a
wake-up call to Western readers."
—Publishers Weekly
"Of this urgent first memoir about the 'reeducation' camps by a
Uyghur woman, the author confirms: 'I have written what I lived.
The atrocious reality.'"
—Ms.
"A current and deeply disturbing personal account of being targeted
as a Muslim Uyghur . . . This memoir puts a much-needed face on
abstract world news about the upwards of one million men and women
estimated to have been taken from their families and jobs,
imprisoned in camps, and 'reeducated' in western China. . .
. Gulbahar’s is a brave and important voice; her choice to lay
her name and face bare to speak as loudly as possible calls us, in
turn, to witness, to amplify, to not look away."
—World Literature Today
"Gulbahar’s story is a truly powerful representation of resilience.
As the Chinese Communist regime is actively seeking to undermine
the values of freedom and democracy across the globe, we need only
read testimonies like this one to know what the future world order
will look like if the Chinese Communist regime is allowed to
continue unchecked. Despite her suffering, her courage in the face
of genocide shines through. May every person who reads it be
inspired to confront these modern-day horrors and be an upstander
just as Gulbahar has been."
—Rushan Abbas, Executive Director, Campaign For Uyghurs
"Gulbahar Haitiwaji’s beautifully written account of brutality
in the Chinese government’s “reeducation camps” is a
remarkable feat—accessible to all readers, deeply human despite the
inhumanity detailed, and unsparing in its details of bleak efforts
to destroy Uyghur identity. One constant throughout the book, and
clearly throughout her life: Haitiwaji’s extraordinary
courage."
—Sophie Richardson, China Director, Human Rights Watch.
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