Mirror. 21 May 2021

Below is an article published by Mirror. Photo:Reuters.

“I last heard from my parents in 2017. I don’t know if they’re dead or alive.”

This is what one Uyghur living in the UK, a mum-of-three who can’t be named for her own safety, told the Mirror.

This is a common story amongst Uyghur Muslims living in the UK, whose relatives back in China are victim to what many have called a genocide.

Imprisoned in camps, they are made to learn Chinese history, the language and watch state-produced broadcasts, documentaries and speeches by leading politicians as a part of their ‘re-education’.

Women are subject to forcible sterilisation and endemic rape and many Uyghur Muslims are sent off for forced labour.

Current estimates are that there are more than one million people in these camps, and analysis of satellite images suggests there are at least 380 camps.

The Chinese Communist Party announced a policy in 2014 as a part of “a people’s war on terror” after a terror attack that the authorities blamed on Uyghur Muslims.

The Chinese government says it’s clamping down on terrorism and separatism in the region and that these camps help assimilate Uyghur Muslims and other minorities.

Uyghur Muslims are often incarcerated for something as simple as outwardly practising Islam, having WhatsApp on their phone, or travelling abroad.

None of the Uyghur Muslims who live in the UK and spoke to the Mirror can be named for their own safety.

One Uyghur Muslim told the Mirror: “My relatives are detained and I don’t want to speak in case they get punished.”

In the UK, Uyghur Muslims live in fear for loved ones, cut off from them, not knowing if they’re dead or alive, in the camps or at home.

Here is what some of them told us:

Lost Family

“I speak to friends I’ve known 5-6 years, and they’re still really shocked I can’t contact my parents. For them it’s a story they read on the news, not something that happens to us,” the mum-of-three, who hasn’t heard from her parents since 2017, said.

She told the Mirror the story of when she last heard from her parents.

“I sent money for a mother’s day gift for my mum. But she was telling me ‘don’t send anything, don’t send anything we’re fine’.

“But as her child I wanted to thank my mum. I sent the money, and my brother went to the bank to get the money.

“I didn’t know what was going on, or why my mum was saying ‘don’t send me anything’ and after I sent money and my brother collected it he disappeared for three days.

“I called and asked if they’d got the money and they said ‘don’t talk about it’. Their voice and everything was different. I asked why and my mum started crying.”

She said it was only after asking her sister that she was told what had happened.

Her brother had been arrested and interrogated by the Chinese government after collecting the money.

After three days of questioning, a lot of the questioning about her and why she was sending him money, he was released and her mother told her never to ring her brother again.

This happened in March 2017, and by June her family’s landlines were disconnected and she hasn’t heard from then since.

Something as simple as sending money or gifts in and out of China, or travelling has led to many being arrested, interrogated and put into the camps.

She doesn’t know if they’re dead or alive, free or in camps and she is far from the only one.

This was a common story amongst Uyghur Muslims in the UK – almost all of those the Mirror spoke to hadn’t heard from their family in years.

A police state

One doctor who came to the UK in the last few years is no stranger to this.

“Don’t go back to your hometown, we are going to college, don’t try to find us, we will find you in the future,” his parents told him.

“When she said college,” he told the Mirror, “she meant the camps.”

This was March 8, 2017 and he hasn’t heard from them since and doesn’t even know if they’re dead or alive.

In August 2009, before he left his home city to begin his medical training, he took a picture outside his mosque – something reminiscent of any student taking one last picture of their home town before leaving for university.

He was taken to a police station and held there for a week, during which he was interrogated and questioned repeatedly on why they had taken the picture.

It is outwards shows of adherence to Islam like this that sees Uyghur Muslims punished in their homeland.

Growing up, he told the Mirror how police visits had been a regular occurrence.

“From 1966-76 my grandfather was arrested again and again because he was a very rich Muslim man,” he said.

“My uncle left China, and every year police would come to our home three or four times a year and ask my mother where is her brother, did we have contact with him, why didn’t he come back,” he said.

When this man returned to China in 2015, after four years away, he was arrested again.

This time he was hit, spat on and slapped as they asked why he had left for Turkey (education as a doctor) and when released, they threatened him if he spoke up.

Everyday casual brutality of their relatives, and sometimes themselves, was something a number of the people we spoke to brought up.

One woman’s husband had been arrested for six months before they left in 2006. During this time he had a nail pulled out, and was left with psychological problems that still haunt him today.

” He has some psychological problem and he doesn’t accept treatment for it,” she said.

“I had nightmares. I couldn’t sleep.”

One college student, a young woman who grew up in Norway and then the UK, described the shock of returning to China to visit her relatives.

“When I visited my relatives when I was eight, I did see a lot of pressure on them,” she said.

“They’ve never had passports. The police always check these families to make sure they’re not going anywhere and if they want to go to another city they have to get permission from the police.

“If we want to go to another neighbourhood, there were two policemen with a gate and weapons, they’d check people, and ask where are you going, what time are you going, when will you be back, and if it was okay we’d be let go.

“For example the girls my age weren’t allowed to wear hijabs, police would forcibly remove the hijabs. When the police came to the house, my aunt was hiding all their religious objects, the qurans and everything.

“I saw how those people were scared for their lives. If they see the police they used to be so scared, and panicked.”

Despite living in the UK, thousands of miles from the camps in the Xinjiang region, she said how heavily the news often hit her, how inescapable it was.

“I’m aware of what’s happening there, just recently we were hearing news of rape and I couldn’t fall asleep for days, I couldn’t concentrate,” she said.

“These women are being tortured in a horrific way, how are my cousins and aunts being treated? What condition are they in today? I had nightmares, I couldn’t sleep.

“Now slowly I’m getting back to normal. But especially the first couple of days I just lost myself.

“I was in a horrible condition just listening to these news,” she said.

This came about after reports of systematic rape and abuse in the camps this year.

Lost Generation

The impact on those living in the UK is huge, and not just for the adults whose parents and siblings are directly affected.

Their children, the younger generation, have also been hugely affected as well.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, families have been separated, unable to hug or be with one another like never before in this country.

This has rightly become a huge issue, with so many eager to hug their grandparents again.

For so many young Uyghur Muslims today, however, this is just their lives, and they won’t be able to hug their grandparents, possibly ever again.

One student, at one of the country’s top two universities, spoke to the Mirror about what it’s been like for her.

She had only been back to China once, but even as a young child she couldn’t escape the reality of the treatment of the Uyghur Muslims.

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“We did go there when I was eight, I visited my country once, when Urumqi Riots were on.

“I had no idea what was going on, everyone else around me was panicked and we were staying with my aunt and cousins.

“But that’s what made me realise there was something going on. There was a lot of hush hush in some areas, there were soldiers marching down the street.

“As a child you realise something’s different. I don’t think I ever fully knew the extent of it though.”

She always knew she was a Uyghur Muslim, but as she grew up she became increasingly aware of the true extent of what the Uyghur population in China were going through.

During family gatherings, when she’d play upstairs with the rest of the children, the adults would talk about it sometimes.

She said: “I didn’t usually sit with the adults, but you’d come down and they’d all be in tears.

“My children everyday they ask me, they’re ten and six, when can we see grandfather and grandmother? I try to explain but they don’t understand.

Another said: “When my eldest hears from friends about talking to their grandparents she doesn’t understand it, she once said ‘grandma, grandpa don’t love me anymore’ I try not to let her be overwhelmed by it, but it’s so hard.”

Alongside losing their family, the younger generations of Uyghur Muslims are losing their culture, their people, their history and their story.

Escape from Xinjiang

But getting out for their children was a reason why so many escaped.

One Uyghur Muslim businessman told us: “We left from China in 2015, I had to leave because of my second baby, the government didn’t allow us to have a second baby because of laws so we had to leave from China.”

Alongside the forced sterilisation and IUD implants, there are laws limiting the births of ethnic minorities in China.

Like many of the other Uyghur Muslims we spoke to, he had firsthand experience of the police oppression in Xinjiang, and after leaving how it affected his family.

“We want to get in touch [with his family], but once we get in touch with them they get in trouble.

“Other family members I haven’t spoken to for four years, we don’t know whether they’re alive or in concentration camps.”

“When I was in China, I knew that two of my younger sisters were in prison, they’re under 18, one was sentenced for eight years and one was sentenced for six years,” he said.

Like the other Uyghur Muslims who left, it was difficult due to internal policing as Uyghur Muslims need to get permission to travel.

“Leaving was very hard, I had money so I was able to bribe the police officer to get a passport which was the only way out.

“It was a big risk to get the flight. We had to cover her [his wife’s] body, she was eight and half months pregnant. Then two weeks after getting to Turkey, we had our second child,” he said.

They weren’t the only family who had to hide their pregnancies, one woman said: “I had to hide I was pregnant, I had to wear underwear to look slim and hide being pregnant. It can cause damage for the baby but we didn’t have a choice.”

They travelled for one month to get to safety in Norway.

But even after leaving China, and first moving to Turkey, the first Uyghur Muslim man who spoke about hiding his wife’s pregnant belly wasn’t safe.

“I remember when I was in Turkey, my mum came to visit, she was a primary school teacher and had worked for the government for 30 years but because she came to visit she was put into a concentration camp.

“They forced my mum and sister to call me and beg me to come back, but I couldn’t, I had four children,” he said.

These calls to Uyghur Muslims abroad were not uncommon.