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PRESS RELEASE

6th January 2022

CANBURY URGES TRADE TO GET BEHIND BOOK BY SURVIVOR OF CHINESE ‘RE-EDUCATION’ CAMPS

Canbury Press, the non-fiction specialist based in London, is to publish the first memoir by a Uyghur survivor of China’s notorious network of ‘re-education’ camps.

Canbury will publish the book during the Beijing Winter Olympics next month, havingacquired non-US World English rights from French publishers Editions des Equateurs. US rights went to Seven Stories in New York.

How I Survived a Chinese ‘Re-education’ Camp tells the real story of author Gulbahar Haitiwaji, who vanished for three years in China’s western desert after being tricked into leaving her adopted France. She constantly feared death as she was subjected to a prison regime of daily brainwashing, given memory-eroding pills and forcibly sterilized.

Her book gives both a powerful personal narrative and the bigger picture about what is happening to the mostly Muslim Uyghur people in China’s border province of Xinjiang.

Since 2017, one million Uyghurs have been interned, in what Beijing says is a crackdown on Islamic extremism. As part of a campaign of ethnic persecution, it has bulldozed mosques, banned prayer, forcibly sterilized women, and used facial recognition software to surveil the entire population, including installing CCTV in private homes.

The US officially categorises China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as a “genocide”. The US, the UK, Canada and Australia are staging a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Games in protest at China’s human rights violations.

Canbury Press is urging the book trade to enjoy its right to freedom of expression and back How I Survived a Chinese ‘Re-education’ Camp, which will be published on 3rd February. Co-written by Rozenn Morgat, a journalist with Le Figaro, it was published in France under the title Rescapée du Goulag Chinois (Survivor of the Chinese Gulag). 

A publicity campaign will accompany its worldwide release.

Martin Hickman, MD of Canbury, said: “Whatever you think of the way we are governed in Britain, and the West, we are hugely fortunate to live in a free society. The Uyghurs in China aren’t so lucky. One of the world’s superpowers is using a variety of tactics, including the latest DNA technology and a covert network of remote jails, to wipe an entire culture off the face of the Earth.

“Gulbahar’s gripping and intimate memoir reveals a compelling human angle to this global issue. It is the story of what happens when an authoritarian state decides to crush an ordinary woman – and how she fights back. With its secret police and jails and pervasive surveillance, it reads like a 21st Century version of 1984.”

BIBLIO FACTS

Title: How I Survived a Chinese ‘Re-education’ Camp

Subtitle: A Uyghur Woman’s Story

Authors: Rozenn Morgat

Translator: Edward Gauvin

Publisher: Canbury Press

Publication Date: 3rd February 2022

Pagination: 256

Format: Hardback /Ebook

Price: £18.99 / 

Hardcover ISBN: 9781912454907 

Ebook ISBN: 9781912454914 

Print distributor: Simon & Schuster

Ebook distributor: Faber Factory

FURTHER INFORMATION

China's treatment of Uighurs amounts to torture, says Dominic Raab

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/12/chinas-treatment-of-uighurs-amounts-to-torture-dominic-raab

China committed genocide against Uyghurs, independent tribunal rules

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-59595952

U.S. Says China’s Repression of Uighurs Is ‘Genocide’

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/trump-china-xinjiang.html

UK and Canada join diplomatic boycott of China Winter Olympics

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59582137

CONTACT

Publicist Rahel Araya: rahelarayapublicity@gmail.com