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Beijing – When police arrested middle-aged Uighur women at the height of the coronavirus outbreak in China, they huddled on a mobile phone with dozens of other women in a detention center.
There, she said, she was forced to drink a drug that made her feel weak and nauseous, with the guards chasing her as she swallowed, she and the others also had to undress once a week and cover her face with canopy while the guards gave them water and their cells with a disinfectant “like firefighters,” he said.
“It’s hot,” the Xinjiang woman said by phone, declining to be named for fear of retaliation. “My hands were damaged, my skin was peeling. “
The government of the Xinjiang region in the far northwest of China is resorting to draconian measures to combat the coronavirus, adding physically locking citizens into their homes, imposing quarantines of more than 40 days, and arresting those who do not. call it a violation of medical ethics, some citizens are forced to swallow classical Chinese medicine, according to government opinions, social media posts and interviews with 3 other quarantined people in Xinjiang.
There is a lack of rigorous clinical knowledge that seems to indicate that classical Chinese medicine works against the virus, and one of the herbal remedies used in Xinjiang, Qingfei Paidu, includes banned ingredients in Germany, Switzerland and the United States. United and other countries to get the best grades of toxins and carcinogens.
The most recent blockade of protest, now on its 45th, occurs in reaction to the 826 cases reported in Xinjiang since mid-July, the number of cases in China since the initial outbreak. that there hasn’t been a new case of local singles transmission for over a week.
Severe restrictions have been imposed elsewhere in China, adding Wuhan, Hubei Province, where the virus was first detected. But Wuhan was dealing with more than 50,000 cases and Hubei with 68,000 in total, much more than in Xinjiang, the citizens of that country were not. forced to take classic medicines and were sometimes allowed to go outdoors in their enclosures for exercise or grocery deliveries.
The reaction to an outbreak of more than 300 cases in Beijing in early June was even milder, and some decided to close the neighborhoods for a few weeks. miles from half of the epidemic in the capital, Urumqi, according to AP’s review of government notices and state media reports.
Even when Wuhan and the rest of China have returned to everyday life more frequently, the closure of Xinjiang is subsidized through a vast surveillance apparatus that has reshaped the region into a virtual police state. For more than 3 years, the Xinjiang government has trained one million people. or more Uighurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities in the detention bureaucracy, adding extrajudicial detention camps, as a component of a broad security crackdown.
After being detained for more than a month, the Uighur woman was released and locked in her home. The conditions are now better, she told the AP, but she is still locked up, even though normal tests seem to be free of the virus.
Once a day, she says, the chain staff imposes classic drugs on her unmarked white bottles, saying she will be stopped if she doesn’t drink them. Chinese social networks.
The government says the measures taken are aimed at the well-being of all residents, but not because they are more serious than those taken elsewhere. The Chinese government has struggled for decades to control Xinjiang, rarely clashing violently with many indigenous Uighurs. in the region, they do not appreciate the power of Beijing.
“The Xinjiang Autonomous Region has defended the precept of man and life first . . . and ensured the protection and suitability of other locals from all ethnic groups,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Friday at a press conference.
The Xinjiang authorities can put in place the tough measures, experts say, because of their generously funded security apparatus, which is estimated to deploy the maximum number of police officers in line with the planet’s capital.
“Xinjiang is a police state, so it’s essentially martial law,” says Darren Byler, uighur researcher at the University of Colorado. “They believe that Uighurs cannot control themselves, they have to be forced to comply for quarantine to be effective. “. “
Recent epidemic measures in Xinjiang do not target all Uighurs and other largely Muslim minorities. Some also apply to Chinese Han-majority citizens in Xinjiang, although they are sometimes spared the extrajudicial detention used as opposed to minorities. This month, thousands of Xinjiang citizens turned to social media to complain about what they called exaggerated measures against the virus in censored publications, some with photographs of citizens handcuffed behind bars and doors sealed with steel bars.
A Chinese woman Han with Wang’s surname published photos of herself drinking classic Chinese medicine in front of a doctor in full protective clothing.
“Why do they force us to take medicines when we’re not sick?”asked in an August 18 message that he temporarily deleted. “Who will take care of it if there are disorders after drinking so many drugs?Why don’t we even have the right to protect our own health?”
A few days later, she simply wrote, “I have lost all hope. I cry when I do.
After criticism, the government loosened some restrictions last week, now allowing some citizens to enter their concessions and some to leave the domain after a bureaucratic approval process.
Wang did not respond to an interview request. But his story is online with many others posted on social media, as well as with interviewees through AP.
A Han businessman traveling between Urumqi and Beijing told the AP that it had been quarantined in mid-July. Although he has been tested for coronavirus five times and negative tests each time, he said, the government has not yet let him out, not just one when he complained about his condition online, he said, his messages were erased and told him to remain silent.
“The worst thing is silence,” He wrote on the Chinese social network Weibo in mid-August. “After a long silence, you will fall into the abyss of despair. “
“I’ve been in this room for so long, I don’t know how long. I just need to forget,” he wrote a few days later. “I write my emotions to calm down, I still exist. I’m afraid of being forgotten of the world. “
“I’m collapsing,” he told the AP more recently, refusing to be identified by retaliation.
He is also forced to take classical Chinese medicines, he said, adding liquid from the same unmarked white bottles as the Uighur woman. He is also forced to take Lianhua Qingwen, an herbal therapy seized by the U. S. Border Patrol and Customs. Hus For violating FDA law, by false claim to be effective as opposed to COVID-19.
Since the beginning of the epidemic, the Chinese government has imposed classical medicine on its population, whose remedies are touted through President Xi Jinping, China’s nationalist and authoritarian leader, who has advocated for a resurgence of classical Chinese culture, although some state-sponsored doctors say they have conducted trials in which it appears that the drug works against the virus , no rigorous clinical knowledge of this statement has been published in foreign clinical journals.
“None of these drugs have been clinically proven to be effective and safe,” said Fang Shimin, a former biochemist and known for his research on clinical fraud in China now living in the United States. “It is unethical to force people, in poor or healthy health, to take medicines that have not proven effective. “
When the virus began to spread, thousands of pharmacies flooded Hubei province for classic remedies after state media promoted its effectiveness against the virus. Pill packs were stored in care packages sent to Chinese staff and academics abroad, some with the Chinese flag. , others reading: “The homeland will be firm forever. “
But new measures in Xinjiang that force some citizens to take the drug are unprecedented, experts say. The government says the share rate of classical Chinese medicine remedies in the region has “reached 100%,” according to a state media report. Court cases in which they were forced to use Chinese drugs, a local official said they did so “in expert opinion. “
“We help solve people’s disorders,” said Liu Haijiang, director of Dabancheng District in Urumqi, “such as taking their children to school, handing them medicines, or locating them a doctor. “
With Xi’s rise, critics of classical Chinese medicine have been silent. In April, an influential Hubei physician, Yu Xiangdong, stepped away from a hospital checkpoint for wondering about the effectiveness of the remedies, an acquaintance confirmed. Yu had “publicly released comments outside the point that defame national epidemic prevention policy and classical Chinese medicine. “
In March, the World Health Organization removed rules from its online page indicating that herbal remedies were not effective in opposing the virus and could be harmful, saying they were “too broad. “bill that would criminalize the discourse by “defaming or slandering” classical Chinese medicine. Now the government is driving classic Chinese remedies as a remedy for COVID-19 abroad, sending pills and specialists to countries like Iran, Italy and the Philippines.
Other leaders have also introduced unproven and potentially dangerous remedies, adding US President Donald Trump, who has been baffled by hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, which can cause central rhythm problems, even though there is no evidence of its effectiveness against COVID-19. China turns out to be the first to force citizens, at least in Xinjiang, to take them.
The Chinese government’s efforts to classical medicine the fortunes of billionaires and fill the state’s coffers. The family circle of Wu Yiling, the founder of the corporation that makes Lianhua Qingwen, has noticed the price of its share more than doubled in the last six months, bringing them to more than $1 billion. It also benefits: the Guangdong government, which has a stake in Wu’s company.
“It’s a massive waste of money, those corporations are making millions,” said a public fitness expert who works hard with the Chinese government, refusing to be known for concern of retaliation. “But then, why accept it? placebo effect, is so harmful. Why bother? There’s no point fighting for it. “
Measurements vary greatly by city and neighborhood, and not all citizens take the medication. Uighur woguy says that despite threats to her, she throws fluid and pills into the bathroom. A Han boy whose parents are in Xinjiang told AP that for them, remedies are voluntary.
Although the measures are “extreme,” he says, they are understandable.
“There is no other way if the government needs this epidemic,” he said, refusing to be identified to avoid reprisals. “We don’t need our epidemic to become Europe or America. “
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