A former prisoner tells the Associated Press that China has a secret prison in Dubai where Uighurs are being held

“Al-Quds Al-Arabi”: The American Associated Press reported in a report published, Monday, that China is running a secret prison in Dubai where Uighurs are being held, in what may be the first evidence that China is running the so-called “black site” outside its borders.

The report, translated by Al-Quds Al-Arabi, stated that a young Chinese woman said she was held with at least two Uyghurs for eight days in a secret Chinese-run detention facility in Dubai.

Wu Huan, 26, who fled to avoid extradition to China because her fiancé was considered a dissident, told The Associated Press that she was kidnapped from a Dubai hotel and held by Chinese officials in a villa converted into a prison, where she saw or heard two other prisoners, Both are Uyghurs.

She said she was interrogated and threatened in Chinese and forced to sign legal documents incriminating her fiancé for harassing her. She was finally released on 8 June and is now seeking asylum in the Netherlands.

While "black sites" are common in China, Wu's account is the only testimony known to experts that Beijing has set up a site in another country. Such a site would reflect how China is increasingly using its international influence to detain or repatriate citizens it wants from abroad, whether they are defectors, suspected of corruption or ethnic minorities such as the Uighurs.

The AP could not independently confirm or refute Wu's account, nor was it able to determine the exact location of the "black site". However, reporters have seen and heard corroborating evidence including stamps on her passport, a telephone recording of a Chinese official asking her questions, and text messages she sent from prison to a priest assisting her and her fiancé.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dubai Police denied the young woman's story.

Black sites are secret prisons where prisoners are generally not accused of a crime and have no legal recourse, without bail or a court order. Many in China are used to barring petitioners from filing complaints against local governments, often in the form of hotel rooms or guesthouses.

Wu and her fiancé, 19-year-old Wang Jingyu, were not Uighurs, but Han Chinese, who make up the ethnic majority in China. Wang is wanted by China because he posted messages questioning Chinese media coverage of the Hong Kong protests in 2019 and China's actions in the border clash with India.

Besides the Uighurs, China has cracked down on dissidents and human rights activists, and launched a massive effort to restore suspected officials as part of a national anti-corruption campaign.

Under President Xi Jinping, China's most authoritarian leader in decades, Beijing has repatriated 1,421 people in 2020 alone over allegations of corruption and financial crimes as part of Operation Skynet.

Dubai also has a history as a place where Uighurs are interrogated and deported to China. Activists say Dubai itself has been linked to secret interrogations with other countries.

Radha Stirling, the legal attorney who founded the advocacy group Detained in Dubai, said she had worked with about a dozen people who reported being held in villas in the UAE, including nationals from Canada, India and Jordan.

The UAE has a history of detaining people on behalf of allied foreign governments

There is no question that the UAE has detained people on behalf of allied foreign governments. I don't think they would ever shrug their shoulders at a request from such a powerful ally.”

Held in a Villa

The report, which was translated by "Al-Quds Al-Arabi", continued that the young woman, who belongs to the millennial generation with short, dyed hair, has never been interested in politics before. But after her fiancé was arrested in Dubai on April 5 on unclear charges, she began giving interviews to the media and contacting overseas Chinese dissidents for help.

Wu said that Chinese officials interrogated her on May 27 at the Element Al-Jaddaf Hotel, and then the police took her to the Bur Dubai police station. Hotel staff refused to confirm her stay or departure, saying over the phone that disclosing information about guests was against company policy.

Wu confirmed that she was detained for three days at the police station, with her phone and personal belongings confiscated. She said that on the third day, a Chinese man came to visit her, who introduced himself as Li Zhuhang, who told her that he worked at the Chinese consulate in Dubai, and asked her if she had taken money from foreign groups to work against China. And the young woman continued, “I said no, I love China very much. My Chinese passport. I am Chinese… How can I do that?”

The Associated Press reports that Li Zhuhang is listed as Consul General on the website of the Chinese Consulate in Dubai. The consulate did not return multiple calls seeking comment and to speak to Lee directly.

Wu said Li took her out of the police station with another Chinese man, who handcuffed her and put them in a black Toyota. There were many Chinese people in the car, but Wu was too scared to have a clear look on their faces.

Half an hour later, they stopped on a deserted street lined with rows of identical compounds. She said she was taken to a white, three-story villa, where a series of rooms had been converted into individual cells.

The house was quiet and cool in contrast to the desert heat. Wu is taken to her own cell, a renovated room that has a heavy metal door.

There was a bed in her room, a chair, and a white fluorescent light that was on all day and night. The metal door remained closed except when she was fed.

Several times, Wu said, a guard took her into a room where they interrogated her in Chinese and threatened not to let her leave. The guards were wearing face masks the entire time.

Wu added that she saw another prisoner, a Uighur woman, while waiting to use the bathroom once. The second time, a Uighur woman was heard shouting in Chinese, "I don't want to go back to China, I want to go back to Turkey." Wu identified the women as Uighurs based on their appearance and distinctive accent.

Wu said a guard gave her a phone and a smart card and told her to call her fiancé and Reverend Bob Fu, president of ChinaAid, a Christian non-profit organization, that was helping the couple.

Her fiancé, Wang, confirmed to the Associated Press that Wu called him and asked for his location.

Fu said he received at least four or five calls from her during this time, some of them to an unknown phone number in Dubai, including one where she was crying and breaking down. She again blamed Wang and said that Fu should not help him.

The Associated Press reviewed the text messages Wu sent to Fu at the time, which were irregular.

Fu said: “I can tell that she was in hiding and did not tell me her whereabouts. At that point, we determined that something had happened to her that prevented her from even speaking.”

Near the end of her stay, Wu said, she refused meals and screamed and screamed in an effort to get her released. The last thing her captors asked her to do, she said, was to sign documents in Arabic and English attesting to Wang's harassment of her.

She told the Associated Press: “I was really scared and forced to sign the documents. I didn't want to sign them."

Chinese intelligence center

Reports have emerged in recent years of transferring Emiratis and foreigners to villas, sometimes for an indefinite period.

Perhaps the most famous case concerns Sheikha Latifa, daughter of Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who tried to flee in 2018 on a boat, but was intercepted by the Indian Coast Guard in the Arabian Sea and returned to the Emirates.

In videos released by the BBC in February, she confirmed that she was being held against her will in a villa in Dubai. "I am a hostage," she said. This villa has been turned into a prison.”

China and the UAE enjoy deep economic and political ties and also work together in the field of counterintelligence. China ratified an extradition agreement with the UAE in 2002 and a judicial cooperation agreement in 2008. The UAE was a trial site for Chinese Covid vaccines, and it cooperated with China in conducting tests.

China and the UAE enjoy deep economic and political ties and also work together in the field of counterintelligence. China also ratified an extradition agreement with the UAE in 2002 and a judicial cooperation agreement in 2008. The UAE was an experimental site for Chinese Covid vaccines.

Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the country, had previously said he was ready to work with China to "jointly strike against extremist terrorist forces," including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, an armed group that Beijing has accused of fostering Uighur separatism.

In late 2017 and early 2018, Emirati authorities detained and deported at least five Uyghurs to China, according to four friends and relatives who spoke by phone with the Associated Press.

The UAE appears to be a hub for Chinese intelligence on Uighurs in the Middle East, former Uighur residents told the Associated Press. Uyghur linguist Abdulweli Ayoub said he spoke with three Uighurs forced to work as spies in Turkey who passed through Dubai to pick up SIM cards and cash and meet Chinese agents.

Jasur Abibola, a former worker in the Xinjiang government, also told the AP that Chinese state security lured him from the Netherlands to the UAE in 2019 after his ex-wife, Asiya Abdullah, obtained secret documents about internment camps in Xinjiang. He said he was greeted in Dubai by more than a dozen people working for the Chinese government, including at least two who identified themselves as working for China's Ministry of State Security.

One of them, a Uyghur man in his fifties, named Dulit, said he was stationed in Dubai. The other, a Han Chinese man who speaks fluent Uighur, said he was on a mission to uncover the source of the leaks, according to Abibola.

The agents gave Abibola a USB device and told him to insert it into his ex-wife's computer. They offered him money, put him in a Hilton resort and bought toys for his kids. They also threatened him and showed him a video clip of his mother in China. One of them said, driving through the sand dunes, that it reminded him of the deserts in Xinjiang.

He remembers that they told him: “If we kill you and bury you here, no one will be able to find your body.” Abibola is now back in the Netherlands, where the AP spoke to him on the phone, and he sent photos of some agents, his hotel and his plane ticket to back up his claim.

Besides the UAE, many other countries have cooperated with China in repatriating Uyghurs. In 2015, Thailand returned more than 100 of them to China. In 2017, the Egyptian police arrested hundreds of Uyghur students and residents and also returned them.

“I'm afraid to call you”

After Wu was released, she was returned to the same hotel where she stayed and given her personal belongings. She immediately contacted Fu, apologizing for her previous calls and asking for help, according to text messages seen by the Associated Press.

In one of the messages, Fu said: “I am afraid to contact you. I'm afraid someone will hear me."

On June 11, she traveled from Dubai to Ukraine, where she was reunited with her fiancé, Wang.

Following threats from Chinese police that Wang could face deportation from Ukraine, the couple fled again to the Netherlands.

I have discovered that the people who deceive us are Chinese, and it is our compatriots who harm our compatriots," she said.