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Heart and Soul: Escaping China’s religious prison camps

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Gulzira & Gulnur

10/01/2020 GMT

Escaping China’s religious prison camps

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, Escaping China’s religious prison camps

We meet Uighurs who escaped Chinese prison camps designed to rid them of their faith.

They tell stories of torture and punishment all because of their faith. Uighurs and other ethnic Muslims locked up and subjected to hours of brainwashing designed to rid them of them their faith.
 
Human Rights Watch estimate there a million Muslims held in camps across China accusing the state of forced political indoctrination, and religious oppression.

There are thousands of Muslims though who have managed to escape the camps to Kazakhstan. Rustam Qobil meets them to learn about their lives. He will hear how they managed to keep their faith when they were imprisoned in a place specifically designed to ‘cleanse’ them of it.
 
They will tell him of the methods their Chinese captors used on them and through this we will hear the emotional stories of the strengthening and weakening of faith, the doubt that comes with mental attacks and how that faith is now in the haven across the border in Kazakhstan.
 
And we will hear how they escaped, how their Islamic faith sustained them through their ordeal and how now it helps them as they wait to hear from family members still held.

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