Thread by @WilliamYang120

A Christian Chinese national who spent 10 months in a #Xinjiang detention camp has arrived in the United States after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by U.S. lawmakers, human rights activists and international lawyers. axios.com/xinjiang-china…

The man, Ovalbek Turdakun, will provide evidence that international human rights lawyers say is vital to the case they have submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor arguing that China has committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

Ovalbek and his wife and child were authorized to enter the U.S. on significant public benefit parole, which permits entry for special purposes such as testifying in a proceeding but does not grant immigration status, ...

... because of the value of the testimony they are expected to give.

"I feel so happy to safely arrive with my family in America. For us, this means finally realizing a long-held hope," Ovalbek, who navigated multiple Asian border crossings and months in diplomatic limbo.

"First, I'm grateful to our God. I'm also grateful to the U.S. government and the friends who helped us the whole time. We would not have been able to safely arrive in America without their help."

He is an ethnic Kyrgyz. Though Uyghurs are the most populous ethnic group targeted for detention, several other groups — including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks and Hui — who live in Xinjiang have also faced detention and other forms of repression.

Ovalbek is the first Christian detained in the camps to come forward publicly about his experience. The Chinese government has claimed the camps in Xinjiang are intended to deradicalize Islamic extremists, ...

... but people without religious affiliation and a small number of Christians are known to have been detained as well.

He has also studied law. While held in the detention camp, Ovalbek says he carefully observed actions by Chinese authorities with an eye to what could be potential violations of international law, according to Conor Healy, government director at surveillance technology ...

... trade publication IPVM whose work on Xinjiang first brought him into contact with Ovalbek and his family.

Those details may include the precise layout of the camp where Ovalbek was detained, the treatment to which detainees have been subjected, and information on the technology used to surveil them.

Ovalbek was detained in February 2018 by Chinese authorities in southwestern Xinjiang's Ulugqat County who stated he had stayed longer than permitted on a previous trip to Kyrgyzstan, according to a record of detention viewed by Axios and Healy's interviews with Ovalbek.

In the video interviews, Ovalbek said he was subjected to multiple "interrogations," during which guards restrained him so tightly it cut off circulation to his arms and legs.

He said he and other detainees were locked in tiger chairs — devices commonly used in China to torture inmates during interrogations — for hours at a time and shocked with electric prods when they fell asleep or tried to readjust their bodies.

Interrogators repeatedly questioned his loyalty to China over his marriage to a Kyrgyz woman, he said.

Detainees were also given injections billed as vaccinations, but inmates who received shots soon became ill, Ovalbek said, with symptoms including an inability to raise their arms, loss of hearing and fluids leaking from their ears.

Ovalbek said he lost the ability to walk for months after the injection and had to be carried around by other detainees.

Healy interviewed Ovalbek and his wife, who visited him in the camp, according to a document dated April 2018 and viewed by Axios. The conditions and treatment Ovalbek described are consistent with other rare accounts from people who have been detained.

After Ovalbek's release from a camp in November 2018, he was held under house arrest for about a year. In December 2019, he left Xinjiang with his wife and child and crossed into Kyrgyzstan on foot, according to Healy.

The Kyrgyz government granted Ovalbek a special residence permit for ethnic Kyrgyz but then stopped renewing it, putting him at risk of deportation back to China.

After hearing about Ovalbek's situation, Healy traveled to Kyrgyzstan in December 2021 and worked on the ground there with several of Ovalbek's American friends to help the family obtain a tourist visa to an undisclosed third country, ...

... which is not being named to preserve the safety of people there, Healy told Axios.

Healy and Ovalbek's American friends then traveled with the family into that country, to help prevent Kyrgyz authorities from deporting them back to China at the border, and helped them file paperwork with the State Department requesting entry to the United States.

Rodney Dixon, a lawyer with U.K.-based Temple Garden Chambers who works on human rights and transnational repression cases, is compiling evidence to establish ICC jurisdiction based on ICC case law.

Dixon has submitted evidence relating to forced deportations of Uyghurs and other Turkic groups from Central Asia back to China and Chinese security officials allegedly operating in Tajikistan to facilitate those deportations.

Dixon said they have identified approximately 3,000 Uyghurs in Tajikistan who have been subject to deportation.

"If Chinese security agents come into Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and are arresting people there and bringing them back into China to put them into camps — the ICC has jurisdiction over the entire crime," Dixon told Axios.

"It’s both the arrests and deportations and the enforced disappearances and inhumane acts that are perpetrated when they get to China."