Lawmakers Are Reintroducing A Bill To Hold China Accountable For The Mass Internment Of Its Ethnic Muslim Minorities
CABRERA: Lawmakers are reintroducing a bill to hold China accountable for the mass internment of its ethnic Muslim minorities. Now according to the U.S. state department, Chinese authorities have indefinitely detained at least 800,000 such people in the past year- and-a-half. CNN's Ivan Watson spoke to a refugee about the horrors inside the internment camps.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There's a lot of love in this apartment in Virginia between a mother and her children. But something, someone, actually, is missing here.</s>WATSON: In 2015, ethnic weeger (ph), Mihrigul Tursun, then, a citizen of China, gave birth to triplets in Egypt where she had been living and working. And barely a month later, she flew home with them to Shin gang (ph), a region of western China. At the airport, she says Chinese police detained her and took away her babies.</s>MIHRIGUL TURSUN, UYGHUR REFUGEE: I asked her, where is my baby? Please give me my baby. And then --</s>WATSON: Taped your mouth.</s>TURSUN: Yes.</s>WATSON: Mihrigul says police jailed and interrogated her for the next three months. The day of her release, she went to the children's hospital to see her infants.</s>TURSUN: When I come, the doctors say, OK, my baby can go outside hospital. They say, yes, he die. I said, what? What die? Your son die this morning at 6:00. I don't believe it. And I scream, why you kill my son? And they say if you scream, I call the police. Stop. Be quiet. And they give me my baby. So cold. I say, why he die? What happened? He say we make operation and he cannot strong, so he die.</s>WATSON: CNN reached out for comment from the</s>TURSUN: They asked questions. When I say I don't know, they start beating me so hard.</s>WATSON: During the second imprisonment, she says she was put in a crowded cell with 50 other women, all ethnic weegers (ph) from her home town in Churchin (ph).</s>WATSON: Someone is my doctor, someone is my medium school teacher, someone are neighbor, all people, 80 percent I know.</s>WATSON: The U.S. government alleges this is part of a much larger, frightening pattern.</s>SCOTT BUSBY, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: Since April 2017, Chinese authorities have indefinitely detained at least 800,000, and possibly more than two million weegers (ph), ethnic Kazakhs (ph) and members of other Muslim minorities in internment camps.</s>WATSON: Beijing has gone from denying these alleged mass detentions to saying prisoners are getting vocational training. Authorities recently took some diplomats and journalists on a carefully supervised tour of some of these facilities. Some detainees told journalists the camps re-educate them.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): All of us found that we have something wrong with ourselves, and luckily enough, the communist party and the government offer this kind of school to us for free.</s>WATSON: The climate of fear in Shinggan (ph) can be felt halfway around the world.</s>ARFAT AERIKEN, UYGHUR REFUGEE: I lost contact with my family in 2017. And</s>I -- WATSON: So that was the last time you heard your mother's voice?</s>AERIKEN: Yes.</s>WATSON: And your father.</s>AERIKEN: Yes.</s>WATSON: 21-year-old Arfat Aeriken came to the U.S. three years ago to get a university education. But gradually, his parents stopped sending tuition money and stopped calling him. Then last September, Arfat made this desperate appeal on You Tube.</s>AERIKEN: I have confirmed that my father sentenced with the nine-year in prison and my mom is in concentration camp.</s>WATSON: If both of your parents are detained who is taking care of your 10-year-old brother?</s>AERIKEN: I don't know.</s>WATSON: If you could say something to your parents right now, what would you say?</s>AERIKEN: I hope they are just alive.</s>WATSON: Afraid to go home, Arfat has since been granted asylum in the U.S. Many weeger (ph) students are similarly stranded here,</s>PROF. SEAN ROBERTS GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: They are terrified because they doesn't know what to do. They don't necessarily want to declare asylum in the United States because that reflects badly on their family but they also have been getting messages from the region that they shouldn't come back because they will definitely be put in one of these internment camps.</s>WATSON: During her incarceration, Mihrigul Tursun claims she saw fellow prisoner die in detention.</s>TURSUN: In the same one room, nine women die, I see. So, so much people die, have torture like this. I will become crazy.</s>WATSON: The Chines government denounces criticism of its human rights record saying these preventative counterterrorism measures protect more people from being devoured by extremism. Mihrigul and her family are now in the U.S., going through the asylum process but it's not easy. Her 3-year-old</s>CABRERA: CNN reached out to regional authorities multiple times for comment on this story and did not receive a response. Now if you ever needed a reason to look before you jump into the water, here it is. What may be the largest great white shark on the planet spotted swimming with divers off the coast of Hawaii. Much more on this, just ahead.