Inside Uighur ‘re-education camps’

Until recently, Merdan Ghappar was best known as a face of the Chinese online retail giant Taobao, for which he starred in clothing videos.

Now, the 31-year-old model has become a global poster boy for the suffering of China’s Uighur community, after he filmed a video of himself chained to a bed in a detention facility. Using a mobile phone hidden from his guards, Ghappar sent images to relatives in Europe, offering a glimpse inside China’s Uighur “reeducation” camps.

A video shows him handcuffed to a bed in a bare room, with mesh on the windows and propaganda messages blaring in the background from a loudspeaker. The images were passed to the BBC by Ghappar’s uncle Abdulhakim, who fled to the Netherlands after taking part in protests a decade ago in China’s north-west Xinjiang province, where most of the country’s 12 million Uighurs live.

Merdan grew up in Xinjiang but left in 2009 to work in Foshan as a model for Taobao, the world’s largest e-commerce website. Two years ago, he was sentenced to 16 months in jail on what friends claim were trumped up charges of cannabis dealing.

After his release last November, he was ordered back to Xinjiang, from where he ended up in a re-education camp. More than a million Uighurs are believed to have passed through the camps in recent years, which Beijing says are voluntary schools to teach Uighurs of the dangers of Islamic extremism. Human rights groups say they are used for torture and abuse. Ghappar describes being held in an overcrowded police jail in Xinjiang. “Everyone was wearing a so-called ‘four-piece-suit’, a black head sack, handcuffs, leg shackles and an iron chain,” he wrote.

Later, he was held in an “epidemic control centre”, from where he appears to have shot the video. Propaganda broadcasts can be heard lecturing against “separatist” forces who want an independent Uighur homeland. The video suggests at least some of the camps remain, despite Beijing claiming most have been closed.

The BBC said the Chinese government declined to answer questions about Ghappar, whose messages to his uncle stopped five months ago. His current whereabouts are unknown.