Chapter 134
Chapter 134
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 134
Chapter Title: What Happened in the Western Land (5)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Like pointing to the moon shining alone in the deep night sky, my finger indicated the massive electronic billboard screen.
Beside me, the flags of nations fluttered like stars, all pointing toward that spot. At its end hung something like a halo around the moon.
Soon, rain would start pattering down onto the earth.
A lunar halo signaling the coming midnight downpour.
“I am… an nameless girl from Uyghur.”
With a trembling voice, a clumsy video clip appeared in everyone’s eyes.
The short footage, less than three minutes long, captured scenes from Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Not the usual leisurely, pastoral scenery, but a city drenched in the blood of its neighbors.
“Students walking down the street, a pregnant woman sitting on a park bench talking to her unborn child, the ordinary owner of a fruit stand.”
On the screen, raindrops of tragedy began to fall one by one from the hazy halo.
The tear-streaked droplets hit the ground, pooling into blood-red puddles.
Blood from heads bashed by batons packed with rebar. Blood from legs pierced by armed police pistols while desperately fleeing.
As the pooled blood was zoomed in on, the girl tore off her hijab.
Her light brown hair fluttered as she calmly opened her mouth.
“And… my family. My father and brother, all of them.”
Like the hijab she had just discarded, the events of that day began to peel back layer by layer.
From the expression and glance of the Saudi ambassador standing beside the girl, I could tell.
How seriously the ambassadors from Arab nations gathered at the UN General Assembly viewed this incident.
“The board has been reset. Victory is now in my grasp.”
“To resort to such a shallow trick…!”
Had the sudden shift in atmosphere left him deflated?
James Wang, the Executive Director, leaned on the railing with one hand, staring at me with trembling eyes.
He must have gripped the angular metal railing hard. His reddened knuckles radiated raw fury toward me.
“Wasn’t it you yourselves who tied the noose around your own necks?”
“Nonsense! Don’t think for a second we’ll back down over something like this. We still have plenty of ways to contain it…”
“Did you really think it would end with something like that?”
In that instant, his hand went slack.
In my eyes, I could see the prickling tension and anxiety crawling up his spine.
He looked like a thundercloud ready to burst with electricity at the slightest prod.
“What do you…”
James Wang trailed off. As the victor in this round, I voiced the declaration I could now make.
A near-fatal verdict on him and the key figures connected to him.
“Concentration camps. The new North Korean-style political prison camps in Uyghur territory.”
“……!”
Finally, the large and small gears meshed together with a ticking clack.
All the causal links converging in one place and starting to turn—it was undoubtedly turning against James Wang.
And now that he knew, it was far too massive a movement for him to do anything about.
“You must have thought of that girl as just a puppet or a bit player.”
I stepped forward and stood before him.
James Wang gaped blankly, unable to utter a word.
Seeing his dazed, almost despairing demeanor, I tapped his limp shoulder and left one final remark as I walked away.
A single phrase to drive the wedge home, leaving him without even the strength to resist.
“Now, no Islamic faction will support the Belt and Road Initiative.”
“…….”
“Not even Malaysia’s intelligence ministry and its affiliates aiming for the Kra Canal.”
The deepening twilight of dusk. My shadow stretched longer under the glow of the sunset.
Having become a tall, lanky silhouette, it strode away on long legs, departing the spot where the loser stood.
Before the UN headquarters in New York’s Manhattan, international flags whipped by the river wind cheered the victor.
On the massive billboard there, a girl was weaving her tragedy-laced autobiography. Stitching the tale of herself and her family with warp and weft.
“My father and brother, thrown into political prison camps. I earnestly plead for the world’s help, so that no more people suffer the same tragedy!”
* * * *
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
At an abandoned People’s Liberation Army facility a short distance from Urumqi, where the tense and gloomy atmosphere had yet to lift.
A temporary sign reading [Xinjiang Reeducation Camp] hung there, and inside, over ten thousand political prisoners wore identical clothes and moved in unison.
“Roll left. Roll right. Roll left. Roll right!”
Their blue uniforms turned ochre from the dust in the intensely grueling punishment drills.
The prisoners, forcibly shaved bald, repeated the agonizing motions under the public security officers’ commands in this rundown abandoned base.
Skin chafed raw where iron chains bound their limbs. Yet they couldn’t even properly feel the pain.
The gun barrels aimed at them were far too chilling.
“Sit. Stand. Sit. Stand! Hey! You old man there, straighten up! Get out front now!”
A public security officer pulled an electrified baton from his belt and pressed it to the old man’s belly.
Immediately, the foul smell of burning flesh assaulted the noses of those nearby.
“This bastard still hasn’t learned his lesson after crawling all the way here?”
“Urk…! Stop, please, stop!”
The Uyghur elder writhed in indescribable agony.
His eyes rolled back as he convulsed, then he collapsed to the ground, motionless, having exhausted all his strength.
Even his faint heartbeat stopped.
“Useless trash! This is why you Uyghurs need to be beaten with iron bars. Hey! You there!”
The officer kicked the corpse like a soccer ball with his military boot. He pointed at a young rookie and barked.
“Take this and dispose of it! Shove it in the incinerator and burn it!”
“Uh… the trash incinerator construction isn’t finished yet.”
“Ha! Don’t you have a brain? Feed it to the dogs then!”
The old man’s final end, reduced to dog food.
At this unspeakable brutality, the prisoners’ eyes filled with fear and shook.
Only then did the officer seem to feel control was restored.
Satisfied, he clasped his hands behind his back and raised his voice.
“The guard dogs will feast well. Attention! Now moving to the workshop. Anyone still thinking of running or resisting.”
Clang, clang. He struck the chain-link fence with his metal baton, still reeking of burnt flesh at the tip.
“You’ll end up like that one, dog food. Got it?”
“…Understood!”
Their reply came half a beat late, from fear.
The half-dazed Uyghur prisoners’ steps began to fall in line under the name of terror.
“Good. Move out! To the labor site!”
The group headed toward the outdoor quarry near the camp.
The leading public security officer hummed a tune, looking pleased.
This was the boondocks of the boondocks, far from the center. Lax oversight, and no nosy foreigners to stir trouble.
“There was a pretty decent-looking Uyghur slave girl among the new batch. Heh heh heh…”
The officer fantasized about satisfying his lust from head to toe.
Was it his excessive greed clouding his senses?
He hadn’t even noticed the pager beeping in his shirt pocket.
Only after nearly reaching the workshop did he spot the flashing red light.
“Hm…? Direct call from the warden? What’s up?”
A strange unease crashed over him like a tidal wave. But he didn’t have long to ponder. The red light blared again with a shrill noise.
-Beep! Beep! Beep!
“Yes, Warden. Communications secure.”
“Forget secure, you idiot! Pull the prisoners back now! Get them inside the buildings, out of sight from outside as much as possible!”
“Yes…? What do you mean?”
The baffled officer.
In this barren wasteland, especially at an outdoor quarry, there were no buildings to hide this many people—and the warden knew that.
Yet to issue such an absurd order in such a panicked voice…
“The UN knows about our reeducation camp! Western nosy reporters are about to swarm in!”
“No way…!”
The two men were visibly rattled. But time wasn’t on their side.
Flash. A man-made beam of light dazzled the officer’s eyes.
On the opposite side of the quarry, atop a low hill, a faint figure like a dot. The mysterious person kept emitting beams while aiming a large object this way.
A large-format camera—perhaps more powerful than the pistol on the officer’s hip.
* * * *
“Holy shit…! This is a scoop. There really is a forced labor camp here.”
“Good thing we hustled right after the UN speech ended. Man, those people’s conditions… brutal. Communist government directives, huh.”
Western reporters on the hill furiously snapped photos.
For those who’d been waiting for a break near Urumqi, the UN speech was the perfect setup.
“The Uyghur girl’s story turning out true. Anyway.”
Having gotten enough shots, the reporter prepared to withdraw.
Proud of his Islamic intel sources, he recalled the Saudi incident and chatted with his colleague.
“This whole thing? Rumor is it wasn’t just the Saudi ambassador’s team pulling the strings.”
“Not from Crown Prince Bin Salman’s camp? Then… who? America? Japan?”
An operation with such masterful setup and payoff, worthy of a veteran intel planner.
But… the answer that followed was utterly unexpected.
“No, no. Not a nation-state. A single individual orchestrated this play.”
“One person? The mastermind behind this massive scandal?”
The Western reporter nodded at his colleague’s words.
Far off, public security officers waved them over. Packing their gear, they started down the hill.
On the path descending the rocky hill in the Uyghur wilderness, the reporter answered his colleague’s earlier question.
In a voice laced with disbelief, even for himself.
“Ammunition Group’s Chairman Han Seo-jun from Korea. That young guy scripted and directed the whole thing perfectly. And the box office? As you can see, it’s a smash hit.”