It has been seven years since concentration camp witness Peyzulla Utuq was shot dead while trying to escape and expose the Uyghur genocide to the world. The world ignored him over a trumped-up charge.
Seven years ago, on April 3, 2018, a man who tried to escape China’s iron grip was killed by Chinese forces. His mission—to expose genocide to the world—was cut short by a fabricated accusation: horse theft. He fought desperately to save himself and reveal the oppression he had endured, but no one could rescue him. Today, few even remember his name.
In early April 2018, Peyzulla Utuq was on the brink of escaping near the Khorgas border in East Turkestan (officially known as Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region) from China’s clutches. Hiding in a graveyard, he feared that even the sound of his breath or the trace of his footsteps would give him away..
Before his attempted escape, he was among the countless victims of mass detention centers—branded as “vocational training centers” by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but known to the world as concentration camps. He had been held in these camps, denied contact with his family, and subjected to torture.
The manhunt for Peyzulla began on March 27, 2018, quickly expanding across the entire Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. By the third day, more than ten thousand armed officers and local residents had been mobilized to track him down. Authorities informed the public that Peyzulla was wounded and had a white bandage around his neck, but they kept the cause of his injury —likely a state-secret.
At the time, a warrant circulated on Chinese social media branding Peyzulla as a horse thief who had allegedly escaped from a “hospital” on March 26, 2018. In reality, hospitals, party schools, and sanatoriums were being used as additional detention sites during the early years of mass internment. The warrant also promised a reward of 100,000 yuan for information leading to his capture—an unusually high bounty for a so-called petty criminal.
Nowhere in the warrant was it mentioned that Peyzulla had been a camp detainee. But those who could see beyond CCP propaganda knew that such an extensive operation would never be launched for a simple horse thief. The truth was clear: the CCP was desperate to silence him. If he had managed to escape abroad, he would have become a powerful witness to the horrors unfolding in the camps.
By April 2, starving and with no other options, Peyzulla left his hiding place to buy bread. A resident, lured by the reward, reported him. On April 3, Chinese polices tracked him down and surrounded him at the graveyard. After his capture, no official statement was made. Six months later, Bitter Winter—with the help of a courageous citizen journalist inside China—revealed that Peyzulla had been shot dead that same day.
China’s determination to bury the truth comes as no surprise. Extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses in East Turkestan must be hidden at any cost. To achieve this, a crucial witness like Peyzulla was permanently silenced.
The absence of media attention to Peyzulla Utuq’s case was not due to the insignificance of his story. It was because the CCP successfully framed him as an ordinary criminal—and some Western media accepted Beijing’s narrative.
Be First to Comment