Beijing [China], October 15 : Hundreds of Uyghur inmates at Keriye Prison in the far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang are forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day in the fields for the benefit of Han Chinese businessmen who rent the 1,650 acres of farmland that is owned by the prison, or to reform the inmates through labour, reported Radio Free Asia.
These inmates of Keriye Prison have to work for more than half their day in the vast fields of red dates called jujubes, according to a prison employee and a guard.
Moreover, the farm is called Lao Gai Nong Chang in Chinese, which refers to "Re-education through Labor Farm."
"They want to make the prisoners undergo ideological transformation through labor in these big fields," said the prison employee.
Under the watch of armed guards, the prisoners must walk to the fields while overseers wearing red vests and holding police dogs monitor them, the two people added.
Moreover, these armed soldiers surrounds the work area, some on horseback to prevent the prisoners from escaping the site, Radio Free Asia reported.
One of the prison employees, who is a Uyghur and has worked at the prison for nine years, said, "I witnessed prisoners being forcibly taken out to work during the day and returned to their cells at night."
However, a prison guard said that many inmates also work in factories located inside and outside the prison walls that produces cement, shoes, gloves and tea.
Adding to the information, the guard said that the prioners serving sentences of over 10 years work in factories inside the prison, whereas, those serving sentences for less than 10 years work outside the prison.
Noting that the work done at the field is arduous and painful, he the employee said that before the fields were converted to jujubes, they produced cotton and some of the inmates' hands used to bleed while picking up cotton, Rdio Free Asia reported.
However, the offences committed by the Uyghur inmates at Keriya Prison is still not known. Adding to this, most of the Uyghurs detained in Xinjiang in last years have never been formally charged with any crime or tried by the government.
According to Radio Free Asia, over 30 Uyghur teachers from Hotan Normal Technical High School jailed on charges of "national separatism" and "religious extremism" are serving their sentences in Keriye Prison.
Although China has formally abolished its "reform through labor" system in 1994, these activities show that it is still practiced in some of the areas.
In 2017 and 2018, Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region detained almost 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in "re-education" camps, where they were forced to work in factories producing textiles, wigs, tomatoes and solar panels for export.
China is currently committing wider genocide against the Uyghur people by torturing them, sexual assaults, forced work and other abuses, the US and other governments declared, reported Radio Free Asia.
Moreover, earlier in 2022, the US enacted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which brought American authorities in power to block the import of goods linked to forced labor in China.
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