A Memoir From Inside the Camps
Kalbinur Sidik’s memoir, “Heart Full of Light,” provides a first-hand account of the atrocities against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, detailing her experiences as a teacher inside the state’s network of “re-education” camps.
According to chinastrategy.org, Sidik—formerly Romanized as Qelbinur Sidik—watched culture, language, and religion dismantled after Beijing’s drive to sinicize the northwestern region intensified in 2016. Academics, writers, and artists vanished as more than 1 million Uyghurs were corralled into camps, and many women aged 18 to 50, including Sidik, were summoned for forced sterilization.
Threats and a Top-Secret Assignment
On February 28, 2017, Sidik received a “top secret” assignment outside the city, according to chinastrategy.org.
Authorities warned her that failure to report for duty or breaches of secrecy would carry consequences for her daughter living in the Netherlands, with officials telling her, “We know where she lives.”
Shackled Students in Squalid Classrooms
Upon arrival at a facility surrounded by soldiers, watchtowers, and cameras, she walked down a corridor of locked doors to a classroom filled with 100 child-sized stools, chinastrategy.org reported.
Her students, both young and old, shuffled in with their wrists and ankles shackled and connected by a chain. Sidik observed shaved heads, lice, and the smell of squalor, noting that some captives wept quietly as they began learning rudimentary Mandarin in hopes that finishing textbooks might earn them their freedom.
Daily Rations and Escape to Asylum
According to chinastrategy.org, Sidik described the assignment as the “most difficult day in 27 years of teaching.” The daily reward for a morning of study was a single steamed bun and watery gruel.
Sidik escaped in 2019 ostensibly for medical treatment, aiming to reunite with her daughter in the Netherlands and seek asylum, chinastrategy.org reported. She told The Diplomat that “silence is not an option,” and she published “Heart Full of Light” to give voice to the silent cries of those she left behind.
