Key facts
- A former Han Chinese police officer, Zhang Yabo, served in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from 2014 to 2023.
- Zhang's testimony details routine torture, rape, and deaths resulting from abuse of Uyghur detainees.
- He supervised forced labor transfers, describing long workdays and confiscated identity cards.
- Arbitrary detentions of up to 15 days were used to enforce obedience.
- Forced labor transfers reached 3.4 million deployment instances in 2025.
- Zhang is seeking asylum in Germany and faces threats from Beijing.
A former Han Chinese police officer, Zhang Yabo, who served in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from 2014 to 2023, has provided unprecedented insider testimony detailing the intensification of state-imposed forced labor and repression against Uyghurs. His account, corroborated by research from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), indicates that the system has become more pervasive and deliberately harder to detect since the cessation of high-profile mass internment.
During his time as a detention center officer from 2014 to 2016, Zhang witnessed routine beatings, torture, rape of a detainee, and deaths resulting from abuse. He estimates that approximately 25 percent of the adult population in his jurisdiction was interned in re-education camps. Between 2018 and 2020, Zhang supervised forced labor transfers to Xinjiang’s cotton fields, describing government convoys, confiscated identity cards, ten-hour workdays, and strict prohibitions on religious expression.
In early 2023, authorities initiated a campaign of short-term arbitrary detentions, lasting up to 15 days, to enforce obedience among Uyghur populations, particularly targeting those who had previously failed to participate in state labor transfers. According to official customs data, forced labor transfers reached a record 3.4 million deployment instances in 2025, and direct exports from Xinjiang surged significantly during Ma Xingrui's tenure as the region's Communist Party secretary from December 2021 to July 2025.
Dr. Adrian Zenz of VOC stated that Zhang's testimony confirms that forced labor has been driven underground and embedded into the state's administrative machinery, making informed consent structurally impossible. Dr. Eric Patterson of VOC highlighted that Zhang has risked everything, with Beijing freezing his accounts and threatening his family, emphasizing that these atrocities are ongoing and woven into global supply chains.
Zhang Yabo is now seeking asylum in Germany, facing charges of endangering national security from Beijing.