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Chinese Kazakh Survivor Honored With State Department Award
Sairagul Sauytbay, who said she faced torture in the Chinese detention camps in the Xinjiang region, never thought her story of survival would gain international attention one day.
The 43-year-old Kazakh woman said she was stunned last Wednesday when U.S. first lady Melania Trump handed Sauytbay the U.S. State Department's International Women of Courage Award for providing firsthand details of the human rights situation in the camps.
"I am also thankful to this country and the Trump administration for upholding values of democracy and human rights, and for sending a strong signal to China to stop its abuses against both Kazakhs and Uighurs who are being oppressed," Sauytbay told VOA.
She said she hoped her story of survival could inspire other Xinjiang residents to speak up about the harsh conditions they are facing.
"I strongly hope that this award would help raise awareness to the human tragedy in East Turkestan, and other countries around the world also step out and help the plight of the voiceless Uighurs and Kazakhs oppressed in China," she said.
East Turkestan is a term often used by the Muslim community in China to refer to Xinjiang.
Stepped-up campaign
Sauytbay worked as a medical doctor when the Chinese authorities stepped up their campaign in Xinjiang in early 2017.
Before her detention by the authorities, she said, she was forced to work in a camp as an instructor, teaching other detainees Mandarin and Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
"Chinese authorities confiscated my passport long before I was first detained in 2017," Sauytbay told VOA, adding that she was prevented from moving to Kazakhstan with her husband and two children in early 2016.
She was allegedly tortured and imprisoned in the detention camps for about six months before her release in March 2018.
She crossed the border illegally into Kazakhstan in April 2018 because of fears that she could be detained again.
"The only dream I had at the time was to unite with my family in Kazakhstan. So I decided to take the risk to cross the border without legal documents," she told VOA.
While in Kazakhstan, Sauytbay was jailed for illegal border-crossing and denied asylum. Sauytbay and her family later moved to Sweden, where she gained international attention as a female activist spreading awareness of the alleged Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang.
'Continues to inspire'
During the award ceremony Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sauytbay "bravely" gave details of the detention camps and "continues to inspire other former detainees and family members to come forward to tell their stories to the world."
Xinjiang is a majority Uighur autonomous region but also hosts about 1.5 million Kazakhs. Many Chinese Kazakhs who flee the region slip into neighboring Kazakhstan, which shares a 1,770-kilometer border with China
Those who arrive in Kazakhstan say that Kazakhs, along with Uighurs, are facing a severe government crackdown by the Chinese government. More than a million people are believed to be detained in the camps.
China, however, has denied such allegations, claiming the facilities are "vocational training centers" that help the local community obtain "new skills."
Chinese officials have said the measures taken in Xinjiang are part of China's "war on three evils": extremism, terrorism and separatism.
During his visit to Kazakhstan in February, Pompeo urged Kazakh officials to offer "safe refuge and asylum" to those fleeing China. The U.S. official met with five Chinese Kazakhs who said their family members were either held in camps or sentenced to long prison terms, and some were forced to work in factories as cheap labor.
One of the five Kazakhs, Aqiqat Qaliolla, became a naturalized Kazakhstan citizen in 2018, four years after his move from China. He told VOA that he had yet to learn the whereabouts of his parents and two brothers who were put in camps in early 2018.
"I first lost contact with my family in March 2018. Later, friends told me that my father, mother and two brothers were taken to concentration camps. I also heard that China even sentenced my father to 20 years in prison," he said.
Immigrating to Kazakhstan
For years, the government in Kazakhstan has said it welcomes the influx of Kazakhs living around the world, including from Xinjiang. By 2016, nearly 1 million Kazakhs had acquired Kazakhstan citizenship, with almost 15% of them believed to have come from China.
The Chinese Kazakhs, aided by shared language and culture, were quick to assimilate in Kazakhstan but still maintained close ties with their relatives in Xinjiang. However, those ties were cut in 2017 during the Chinese crackdown in the region.
Aidin Aghimolda, a Kazakh from Xinjiang, went to Kazakhstan in 2003 as a student and later became a Kazakhstan citizen. He told VOA he had recently learned that his three siblings and a sister-in-law in Xinjiang were taken to detention camps in August 2018.
"Two of my brothers, a sister and a sister-in-law were all taken to camps on the same day in August of 2018 for no apparent reason," Aghimolda told VOA, adding that all of them were given long prison sentences, ranging from 11 to 14 years.
Another victim, Muhamet Qizilbek, immigrated with his family to Kazakhstan in 2014 and obtained his citizenship in 2018. He said his wife went to visit her parents with a Chinese passport and Kazakh residence card in 2017, and she has not been able to come back since then.
"When my wife arrived in China, they took away her passport and Kazakh residence card, and she had been first put in house arrest for 90 days before being taken to an internment camp. She was in the camp for a year and then was moved to a factory with an 800-yuan monthly salary," he told VOA.
Kazakhstan's dilemma
Nargis Kassenova, a senior fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, told VOA that the Xinjiang issue has put Kazakhstan's government in a difficult position because of the country's close economic ties to China.
"It tries not to make strong moves that would upset too much the domestic public opinion and China, keeping both moderately upset," Kassenova told VOA.
She said Kazakh officials are trying to maintain the "delicate balance" by "downplaying the plight of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang, at the same time increasing the number of visas issued to ethnic Kazakhs from China."
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Inside Massive DEA Raid Targeting Drug Cartel
In the darkness, the team suits up quietly, putting on their helmets and tactical gear. Federal agents lug battering rams, bolt cutters and heavy weaponry by foot up a hill on a residential California street that's softly aglow from street lamps. Then the agents turn onto the walkway of their target's home.
"Police! Search warrant!" one officer yells as agents bang on the front door. "Police search warrant!" And then three thunderous bangs as the task force breaks down the front door.
Moments later, a reputed member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known as CJNG, is walked out in handcuffs.
In early-morning raids Wednesday, agents fanned out across the United States, culminating a six-month investigation with the primary goal of dismantling the upper echelon of CJNG and hoping to get closer to capturing its leader, one of the most wanted men in America. There's a $10 million reward for the arrest of Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera.
The gang controls between one-third and two-thirds of the U.S. drug market. It is so violent that members leave piles of bodies in streets and hanging from overpasses in Mexico, and they fill the city of Guadalajara with mass graves. They carry machine guns and hand grenades. They once used rocket launchers to shoot down a Mexican military helicopter.
More than 600 people have been arrested during the operation in recent months, more than 15,000 kilos of meth was seized and nearly $20 million was taken as search and arrest warrants were executed. About 250 were arrested Wednesday.
"El Mencho and his associates prey on the addicts, and they prey on small towns where they can act as bullies and infiltrate these small towns," said Wendy Woolcok, the special agent in charge of Drug Enforcement Administration's special operations division. "They promise hope, and they deliver despair."
A top target
For the U.S, combating Mexico's fastest-growing and most violent gang is a top priority. Law enforcement officials believe the gang has drug distribution hubs in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston and Atlanta. It is believed to have a presence in 24 of Mexico's 32 states.
Unlike other cartels, CJNG shows no reluctance in directly attacking police and army patrols and is blamed for the deadliest attacks against law enforcement forces in Mexico. In eliminating rivals, it has carried out spectacular acts of violence.
"Their propensity to violence is a big part of it. They're a very violent organization, they're a well-armed organization. But really, the gasoline that was thrown on the fire was synthetic drugs," said Bill Bodner, the special agent in charge of the DEA's field office in Los Angeles.
The Associated Press had exclusive access to the raid outside Los Angeles and the national command center.
In California, about a dozen team members prepped early Wednesday for their target. They searched the home, a stately, salmon-colored Spanish Colonial-style with a large chandelier in the foyer, palm trees in the front yard, and crawled on the ground to look under cars, including a black Lexus, in the driveway. No shots were fired.
Victor Ochoa, 34, was arrested on drug charges. The DEA alleges he acts as a stash house manger for the cartel.
Command center
At the command center tucked inside a nondescript government building in northern Virginia, a group of a dozen analysts and agents sat behind computer screens. As agents were banging down doors across the country, the phones rang at the command center and analysts recorded the number of arrests and amount of drugs seized on printed worksheets.
An analyst entered the information into a DEA computer as other analysts ran phone numbers, addresses and nicknames found inside the homes being searched.
The special agent in charge of the special operations division assembled with her team in front of a heat map — red dots glowing darker and darker as more arrests are made, primarily in Texas, California and New Jersey. By 9 a.m., more than 60 people had been taken into custody.
Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, called the operation "the most comprehensive action to date in the Department of Justice's effort to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately destroy CJNG"
While Mexican drug cartels made their money predominantly from marijuana in past decades, the market has somewhat dissipated with the state-level legalization of cannabis in dozens of states across the U.S.
Now, they've turned to methamphetamine and fentanyl, selling it at almost 14 times the price it cost to make and flooding the streets of the U.S., fueling homelessness and the opioid crisis, and leaving behind another trail of bodies: from overdoses.
Multidrug shipments
The Jalisco Cartel was formed in 2010 from a wing of the Sinaloa cartel based in the western city of Guadalajara. While it once specialized in producing methamphetamine, like most Mexican cartels it has expanded into multidrug shipments including fentanyl, cocaine, meth and heroin.
The cartel is led by the elusive Oseguera, whose bodyguards once shot down a Mexican military helicopter to prevent his arrest. In recent weeks, prosecutors have brought charges against his son, Nemesio Oseguera, also known as "El Menchito," and his daughter, Jessica Johanna Oseguera.
And officials say he's more dangerous than reputed Mexican drug kingpin and escape artist Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who as leader of the Sinaloa cartel ran a massive drug conspiracy that spread murder and mayhem for more than two decades.
"I think the threat from El Mencho and CJNG is greater right now because in my opinion, at the time Chapo was captured or at the time he was kind of at his at his heyday, so to speak, the Sinaloa Cartel was fractured. It was a little broken up," Bodner said.
El Chapo was a little flashier, but Mencho and the Jalisco gang see their drug business as just that — business, Bodner said.
"They have a little bit more discipline. They're not necessarily into the partying and living the good life. It's just about the business of drug trafficking and control, and that's what makes them scarier," Bodner said.
The Jalisco cartel is also known for brazen tactics such as driving around in convoys of pickup trucks marked with the letters "CJNG" and for circulating videos of heavily armed cartel gunmen in military-style dress. While Mexico says it is no longer concentrating on detaining drug lords, the Mexican government has extradited Oseguera's son and has detained some of his associates.
