The authorities warned her a third child wasn’t permitted. “They told me I couldn’t have the baby because I’ve had two others, and that a third was not allowed,” she says. “I told them my husband is a Kazakh citizen and that I’m carrying a Kazakh citizen. But they insisted that I have an abortion.”

After that, she says, authorities called her every day, urging her to go to the hospital for an abortion before the fetus grew bigger.

“Finally I told them, ‘No,'” she says. “I’m not willing to do it.”

It didn’t matter.

“The police and local officials came and took me and my brother to a government building,” the woman says. “They made my brother sign a document saying that if I don’t get an abortion, he would suffer the consequences. I knew this meant he’d be detained in a camp. I’d do anything to protect my brother, so I agreed to the abortion.”

Two days after her pregnancy was terminated, she says, police took her brother to an internment camp anyway.