Police in Künes County, in China’s Xinjiang region, called Tursunay in early March 2018 and said they needed to speak to her again. She asked if they were going to take her for more education, and they said only that she should report to the station within 48 hours. So be it if they were, her last stay in the camp had not been so awful. She could endure another if it meant they would consider her once more graduated and return her passport. She tidied apartment, then went to them by taxi the next day.
It was as she had thought. Two officers led her to a car and drove her away. She recognized the road to the same facility but when they approached, she saw it transformed. Massive metal gates. Fences topped with spiraled razor wire. High walls and watchtowers. A roadblock stopped anyone from getting within 100 meters of it — even the police had to pass through two checkpoints.
Closer still and she saw the guns the guards were holding and the buses parked up in front. The buses were disgorging hundreds of women and men and children of every age. Police were lining them up and separating the children from the rest and putting them onto another bus. Their mothers and fathers howled and clung on but couldn’t stop them.
The car stopped and the officers passed Tursunay to guards who took her through a metal door that was also new. It closed behind her and there was a line of other women and guards all around them. The guards moved new arrivals fast through a body scanner, confiscating scarves, jewelry, phones, and clothes down to the underwear. More of them stood idly by watching and they had guns and shock batons.
*
Tursunay stood in that shuffling queue and felt fear like she never had. An old woman was next to her. Thin and stooped in a long dress. The guards ordered Tursunay to strip and take out her earrings. Tursunay began undressing but the guards went for her earrings before she was able and yanked them out hard. She cried out and clutched at her lobes and saw blood on her fingers.
The pain was shocking but she forgot it when the guards turned to the old woman. They grabbed the woman’s headscarf, and her hair was white underneath. They tore off her dress and she stood in only a loose undershirt. She held her arms across her chest to cover herself, but the guard told her to stand straight with her hands by her side. The woman did and she was shaking at the shame and terror of it.
“Now shut your mouth.”
The guard gave them uniforms to change into. Blue trousers and a blue top. Then those guards handed Tursunay and a group of others to new guards and the new guards led them through rooms and corridors with more metal doors and gates that all closed behind them.
Tursunay asked one of the guards why everything had changed so much. “You haven’t seen the real changes yet,” he told her. “Now shut your mouth.”
*
Into a building different from the last dormitory. Up flights of stairs and along a corridor lined with cells. The guards paused by one and ordered them in. There were about 20 trainees inside but only a couple of beds and a small plastic stool each. Instead of a toilet there was a bucket without anything to cover it. There was no ventilation either but on one side was a window with a crack of the view outside. Above them was an array of cameras. One that moved constantly and two more in the corners. A television hung out in the corridor.
It was not possible to live like that. Tursunay had to get out. She had been released the last time because she was sick so perhaps that could happen again. She decided that the fastest way to be hospitalized would be to not eat. Their meals still consisted only of black soup, so they were easy to refuse.
There were no classes like before at first and the guards just gave them booklets with the words to revolutionary songs in them. They sat on their stools facing the television for hours with their backs straight and their hands on their laps watching videos about Xi Jinping Thought.
The videos stopped and they sang from their booklets and recited loyalty oaths. It was occasionally interrupted by the horrible wail of an emergency siren. That signaled a drill that Tursunay never knew the point of. The moment the siren started the trainees had to kneel on the floor fast and interlink their fingers behind their heads. Not doing it fast enough meant punishment. Sometimes they had to stay like that for an hour or more until their knees ached unbearably but moving meant punishment too.
*
During the day they were at least permitted to use a bathroom in the hallway but only for three minutes each. She and the other new arrivals could not bear to use the bucket except sometimes to urinate. Otherwise, they would hold it until morning came.
