'From his new home in Europe, former detective Jiang struggles to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. The enduring suffering of those who went through the camp system plays on his mind; he feels like he's close to a breakdown.
"I am now numb," Jiang said. "I used to arrest so many people."
Former inmate Ayup also struggles to sleep at night, as he suffers with nightmares of his time in detention, and is unable to escape the constant feeling he is being watched. But he said he still forgives the prison guards who tortured him.
"I don't hate (them)," Ayup said. "Because all of them, they're a victim of that system."
"They sentence themselves there," he added. "They are criminals; they are a part of this criminal system." ''
(CNN) - The raids started after midnight in Xinjiang.
Hundreds of police officers armed with rifles went house to house in Uyghur communities in the far western region of China, pulling people from their homes, handcuffing and hooding them, and threatening to shoot them if they resisted, a former Chinese police detective tells CNN.
"We took (them) all forcibly overnight," he said. "If there were hundreds of people in one county in this area, then you had to arrest these hundreds of people."
The ex-detective turned whistleblower asked to be identified only as Jiang, to protect his family members who remain in China.
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The first time Jiang was deployed to Xinjiang, he said he was eager to travel there to help defeat a terror threat he was told could threaten his country. After more than 10 years in the police force, he was also keen for a promotion.
He said his boss had asked him to take the post, telling him that "separatist forces want to split the motherland. We must kill them all."
Jiang said he was deployed "three or four" times from his usual post in mainland China to work in several areas of Xinjiang during the height of China's "Strike Hard" anti-terror campaign.
Launched in 2014, the "Strike Hard" campaign promoted a mass detention program of the region's ethnic minorities, who could be sent to a prison or an internment camp for simply "wearing a veil," growing "a long beard," or having too many children.
Jiang showed CNN one document with an official directive issued by Beijing in 2015, calling on other provinces of China to join the fight against terrorism in the country "to convey the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions when listening to the report on counter-terrorism work."
Jiang was told that 150,000 police assistants were recruited from provinces around mainland China under a scheme called "Aid Xinjiang," a program that encouraged mainland provinces to provide help to areas of Xinjiang, including public security resources. The temporary postings were financially rewarding -- Jiang said he received double his normal salary and other benefits during his deployment.
But quickly, Jiang became disillusioned with his new job -- and the purpose of the crackdown.
"I was surprised when I went for the first time," Jiang said. "There were security checks everywhere. Many restaurants and places are closed. Society was very intense."
During the routine overnight operations, Jiang said they would be given lists of names of people to round up, as part of orders to meet official quotas on the numbers of Uyghurs to detain.
"It's all planned, and it has a system," Jiang said. "Everyone needs to hit a target."
If anyone resisted arrest, the police officers would "hold the gun against his head and say do not move. If you move, you will be killed."
He said teams of police officers would also search people's houses and download the data from their computers and phones.
Another tactic was to use the area's neighborhood committee to call the local population together for a meeting with the village chief, before detaining them en masse.
Describing the time as a "combat period," Jiang said officials treated Xinjiang like a war zone, and police officers were told that Uyghurs were enemies of the state.
He said it was common knowledge among police officers that 900,000 Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities were detained in the region in a single year.
Jiang said if he had resisted the process, he would have been arrested, too.
'Some are just psychopaths'Inside the police detention centers, the main goal was to extract a confession from detainees, with sexual torture being one of the tactics, Jiang said.
"If you want people to confess, you use the electric baton with two sharp tips on top," Jiang said. "We would tie two electrical wires on the tips and set the wires on their genitals while the person is tied up."
He admitted he often had to play "bad cop" during interrogations but said he avoided the worst of the violence, unlike some of his colleagues.
"Some people see this as a job, some are just psychopaths," he said.
One "very common measure" of torture and dehumanization was for guards to order prisoners to rape and abuse the new male inmates, Jiang said.
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From his new home in Europe, former detective Jiang struggles to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. The enduring suffering of those who went through the camp system plays on his mind; he feels like he's close to a breakdown.
"I am now numb," Jiang said. "I used to arrest so many people."
Former inmate Ayup also struggles to sleep at night, as he suffers with nightmares of his time in detention, and is unable to escape the constant feeling he is being watched. But he said he still forgives the prison guards who tortured him.
"I don't hate (them)," Ayup said. "Because all of them, they're a victim of that system."
"They sentence themselves there," he added. "They are criminals; they are a part of this criminal system."
Jiang said even before his time in Xinjiang, he had become "disappointed" with the Chinese Communist Party due to increasing levels of corruption.
"They were pretending to serve the people, but they were a bunch of people who wanted to achieve a dictatorship," he said. In fleeing China and exposing his experience there, he said he wanted to "stand on the side of the people."
Now, Jiang knows he can never return to China -- "they'll beat me half to death," he said.
"I'd be arrested. There would be a lot of problems. Defection, treason, leaking government secrets, subversion. (I'd get) them all," he said.
"The fact that I speak for Uyghurs (means I) could be charged for participating in a terrorist group. I could be charged for everything imaginable."
When asked what he would do if he came face-to-face with one of his former victims, he said he would be "scared" and would "leave immediately."
"I am guilty, and I'd hope that a situation like this won't happen to them again," Jiang said. "I'd hope for their forgiveness, but it'd be too difficult for people who suffered from torture like that."
"How do I face these people?" he added. "Even if you're just a soldier, you're still responsible for what happened. You need to execute orders, but so many people did this thing together. We're responsible for this."
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'Some are just psychopaths': Chinese detective in exile reveals extent of torture against Uyghurs, October 5, 2021
Context'Mr. Xi called for an all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” using the “organs of dictatorship,” and showing “absolutely no mercy.” '
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'..Xi delivered a series of secret speeches setting the hard-line course that culminated in the security offensive now underway in Xinjiang..'(The New Alliance)(China is 'threat to world') - '..the only way to truly change communist China is to act not on the basis of what Chinese leaders say, but how they behave..''..an [global] aggressive campaign by China to silence those who speak up.'(War)(The threat to world order is China) - '..rigorous analysis of Chinese political warfare and a warning of its effects on democracy.' - ..‘Insidious Power: How China Undermines Global Democracy’