‘Our souls are dead’: how I survived a Chinese ‘re-education’ camp for Uyghurs

Upon reading Charlotte Goodburn’s arcticle and learning about the discriminatory practices used in China’s state school system, I wanted to further explore this country’s educational practices. I came across an article about a much more intense form of minority discrimination, which the Chinese government has coined the “re-education” of Uyghurs. 

The Uyghur population is a minority group from the Xinjiang region annexed in 1955 (Haitiwaji & Morgat, 2021). Since then, the Uyghurs have been discriminated against based on views of the Han majority (Haitiwaji & Morgat, 2021). To control the Uyghur population, the Han-run Chinese government has created “re-education” programs. This article details one woman’s experience in this “program,” which should be reclassified as a “camp.”

Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a member of the Uyghur minority, fled to France with her family in 2006. Ten years later, Haitiwaji was called and asked to return to China to sign certain documents. Upon returning, she was imprisoned for five months and then moved to a re-education “school” in the Baijiantan district. While there, she was forced to do unimaginable things:

We were ordered to deny who we were. To spit on our own traditions, our beliefs. […] I was held in Baijiantan for two years. During that time, everyone around me […] tried to make me believe […] that [Uyghurs] are terrorists.

(Haitiwaji & Morgat, 2021)

Learning about these “re-education” camps is horrifying, especially because this has all happened within the past six years. Although not as extreme, the contents of Goodburn’s article mirror a similar phenomenon for migrant children in Beijing. These children are discriminated against simply because of their rural background. The hukou system from the 1950s has continued to create “a ‘caste-like system of social stratification’ between urbanites and rural peasants,” (Goodburn, 2009, p.495) excluding migrant children from state schools. This discrimination “is fundamental to shaping the lives, and particularly the educational experiences, of migrant children in urban areas” (Goodburn, 2009, p.496), which connects to the Uyghur population’s experiences.

References:

Goodburn, C. (2009). Learning from migrant education: A case study of the schooling of rural
migrant children in Beijing. International Journal of Educational Development, 20(5),
495-504.

Haitiwaji, G. & Morgat, R. (2021, January 2021). ‘Our soles are dead’: how I survived a Chinese
‘re-education’ camp for Uyghurs. The Guardian. 

Ukraine conflict: What we know about the invasion

We are currently in the midst of a major world event happening in Eastern Europe: the Ukraine invasion by Russian military forces on the orders of Vladimir Putin. In a televised speech last night, “Mr Putin announced a ‘military operation’ in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region” (BBC News) and explained Russia’s intervening as “self-defence” in order to “de-Nazify” the country (BBC News). Since then, Ukrainians across the country have been hearing loud bangs, taking cover, and fearing for their lives. 

When I first heard about the Ukrainian crisis, I thought back to our reading this week from Krause and Eiran, “How Human Boundaries Become State Borders.” Krause and Eiran focus on radical flank groups bringing about change in territorial disputes by Bottom-Up means. In a Bottom-Up approach, “construction and inhabitance […] by radical flank members precede state presence and authorization” (Krause & Eiran, 2018, p.485), resulting in a change in borders and control due to the state recognizing it needs to now protect the new settlement. I see something similar happening in the eastern part of Ukraine, where “Since 2014, Russian-backed separatists and Ukraine’s armed forces have been fighting a war in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in which more than 14,000 people have died” (BBC News). The Russian separatists are a radical flank group using a Bottom-Up approach to gain territory. With his announcement last night, “President Putin has now recognised the two regions held by the Russian-backed separatists as independent states and ordered Russian troops there, tearing up a peace deal” (BBC News). Russia is now seeing these radical flank group settlements as part of the Russian state and is making moves to “protect” them, resulting in a declaration of war on Ukraine. As Krause and Eiran state, “Violence and territorial control have always gone hand in hand” (Krause & Eiran, 2018, p.479). We are seeing this statement coming to life in Ukraine. 

References:

Krause, P. & Eiran, E. (2018). How Human Boundaries Become State Borders: Radical Flanks
and Territorial Control in the Modern Era. Comparative Politics, 50(4), 479-499.

Ukraine conflict: What we know about the invasion. (2022, February 24). BBC News. Retrieved
February 24, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60504334

When I studied abroad in Florence, I got the opportunity to teach English in a fourth year classroom in a Florentine primary school. There were twenty-five students in the class, with one student having recently immigrated from Morocco. My cooperating teacher told me that he was having trouble fitting in with his classmates, particularly because of his minimal Italian language abilities. It became a goal of my lessons to incorporate socialization among classmates so that he would eventually become more comfortable doing so on his own.

This image is an example of work this student would produce during my lessons. This student amazed me because, despite the challenges, he was able to use the Italian he knew to learn English. Towards the end of my time at that school, this student was showing great progress in both languages. He also started to become more confident when interacting with his classmates. I learned a lot from all of my students in that class, but my experience with this particular student really stuck with me.