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200 miles
Uyhgurs Battle Extermination in China Local refugees recount horrors of Xinjiang Province atrocities
BY ISRAEL DE JESSUS NIEVES Photo Co-Editor
C
hina’s Uyghur minority is being systematically erased. A trio of local refugees refuse to comply. Lost in the nightmarish news cycles of global pandemic, insurrection at the capitol and economic malady, the human rights tragedy of the 21st century has gone barely noticed. Mustafa, Nurxat and Ali escaped the dystopian horrors of China’s Xinjiang Province for a new life in the American borderlands. Freedom comes with a cost, including gnawing worry about those left behind. “It’s very hard to be Uyghur,” said Nurxat, with unintended understatement. Mustafa, Nurxat and Ali (all pseudonyms) expressed happiness to be free from Chinese oppression in San Diego County, but great sadness at the systematic efforts by the Xi Jinping regime in China to obliterate the unique Muslim Uyghur culture and force an entire race to intermarry, assimilate or die. Xinjiang Province is on the northwestern edge of China, far from the population and power centers, but not far enough. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never been fond of the Muslim Uyghur minority, which comes from a different gene pool than the dominant Han Chinese race. It is also more religious than the largely secular dominant culture, though without any history of conflict or antagonism.
COURTESY COLEGOTA
X I N J I A N G U N D E R A S S A U LT
In July 2009, the CCP ramped up its assault on the Uyghurs, horrifying human rights activists around the globe. Planet Earth’s political class, however, has mostly looked the other way. Money talks, critics complain, and China is an economic Goliath with trade entanglements on every continent. Even countries concerned about the plight of the Uyghurs seem afraid to rile the Chinese government. Ali, like many Uyghurs, insists that his grievances are not against the Chinese people, but focused on the communist government of China. Like many Uyghurs, Ali said he has family in “re-education centers” that he called poorly-disguised concentration camps. International human rights organizations, including the United Nations Rights Council, estimate that between 1-3 million of the estimated 20 million remaining Uyghurs are confined to the camps or forced labor. He fears for his family, he said, and longs to speak out on their behalf. He dares not. Uyghurs, he said, are conditioned to be cautious, even across the ocean from the CCP. Ali has found unexpected moments of grace in America, he said, from unexpected sources. “My first history class in an American high school my teacher asked me where I was from and I said China. He looked at me and said ‘no you’re not,’” Ali recalled. “I said ‘I’m from China’ and he said ‘no you’re not.’ And then I understood what he was actually saying. I should stand up for who I am. It gave me goosebumps, bro. He was my favorite after that and we talked about a lot of things. He was an amazing person who changed my life.” Ali said other Uyghurs live their lives like the early-high school version of himself. They
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COURTESY TODENHOFF
are often conditioned through terror and intimidation to “become Chinese.” “I’m not dissing any Asian-looking person, bro, but I don’t look like Chinese,” he said. “I’m not Chinese, I’m a different identity. I’m from a different culture.”
N O D I S S E N T T O L E R AT E D
In China, Ali said, the CCP has total control of the state, education, and all news and entertainment media. Criticism of the government or President-for-Life Xi Jinping is not tolerated. Dissenters often disappear. Scrutiny is even worse for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which may be the world’s most closely surveilled region. Cameras are ubiquitous and guard posts are found every few hundred meters. Ali described an Orwellian dystopia, a description shared by American, British and French news networks which have broadcast video of the Xinjiang network of spy cameras. Uyghurs are restricted from speaking their language or congregating. Dissenters are captured and sent to labor camps euphemistically called “economic opportunity centers.” “Any sort of gathering with (10 people or more) UYGHER FACT
The Uygher people represent 1 of the 55 ethnic minorities living in China.
BLOOD FOR OIL — Escapees from Xinjiang Province say China's Communist government is engaged in a comprehensive effort to erase the Muslim Uyghur minority through interbreeding, sterilization, imprisonment in forced labor camps and genocide.
is illegal,” he said. “Ten people are nothing in America. Like every birthday party has 10 people, right? (In Xinjiang, however,) 10 people (meet up) and they send swat teams, maybe 15 swat cars with four officers (in each car). Why?” Public expressions of disagreement are met with overwhelming force, he said. “If even a small protest group of a few kids is marching down a lane of the roadway, a line of 16 or 17 heavy artillery military in tanks will shoot them all down,” he said. When Ali first came to America, he said, it seemed surreal. He experienced freedoms he did not have in Xinjiang. Even so, he worries that the CCP is watching. He is careful about what he says and does around Chinese or Mandarinspeaking people, even in San Diego County. “They take your name, your language, your race away,” he said. “They take your family members. They take your men away, your women away. They take away your ability to have kids.” China’s antipathy toward the historicallypeaceful Uyghurs is undeserved, Ali said. “Why to that extreme, bro? Why to that extent?” he said. “Are we some kind of a werewolf or something that they need to kill off? Are we gonna have super powers and explode all over them?”
E D U C AT I O N A S “BRAINWASHING”
Mustafa and Nurxat had different upbringings. Mustafa was raised under a
Chinese education system, while Nurxat was raised in a Uyghur education system. They both agreed the systems are nothing alike. Mustafa said as a child he was “brainwashed” into rejecting his Uyghur identity and conforming to the orthodoxy of the CCP. Nurxat said differences were easy to see, including disparities in maintenance and upkeep of Chinese schools versus Uyghur schools. Mustafa immigrated to America in 2015. A few years later he returned to visit China, he said, and saw a new world he did not know. His parents had tried with prescriptive subtlety to warn him during video conversations over “We Chat.” He said he missed obvious signs that the situation in Xinjiang was not safe. When Mustafa flew into Xinjiang, he said, he was detained at the airport and questioned for hours by Chinese officials. On the same day his family received a call from the police ordering Mustafa to the police station. Mustafa said he was questioned extensively about his life in America. He was compelled to surrender his passport to CCP officials. He stayed for two months, unable to leave until he and his family bribed Chinese officials to return his passport. He feared he would be sent to a concentration camp and “disappeared.” “Thanks to Allah,” he said. “I was so lucky. I made it out.” Nurxat described a similar grilling and harassment after he had traveled to Turkey. He was questioned as though he were a Muslim terrorist, he said, which was an unnerving experience.
F A M I LY L E F T B E H I N D
Mustafa and Nurxat both said they have family members in concentration camps, some they know are alive and some they have lost contact with. Both said they feared a similar fate if they remained in China. Mustafa said he and Nurxat consider themselves extremely fortunate and thrilled to be in the United States. American freedom has allowed him the opportunity to finally feel human, Mustafa said. Nurxat agreed. “I’m free now and I’m happy,” he said. Ali confessed that he is often overcome with worry about his people in Xinjiang Province. “For me, there is an overwhelming sadness and (feeling that) there’s no hope when it comes to my people if we are invisible,” he said. “They behead people and put their heads on sticks for others to see,” he said. “They keep people in cages that are only three feet high so you can’t stand up. There is water dripping all the time so their skin is always wet. Cold water dripping on you constantly until your skin gets (diseased) and starts ripping off.” Heightened global attention to the Uyghurs’ situation is encouraging, Ali said. It is, he said, a small, but hopeful move in the right direction. “That’s something I’m super happy (about), that people actually know who we are,” he said. Nurxat said he also fears for the Uyghurs living today in Xinjiang and other parts of China. A global Uyghur diaspora watches in sadness as a great culture is being crushed, he said. “You can lose every single thing in your life (and survive),” he said. “You can lose your money, your family, your brothers, but you cannot lose your identity. If you lose your identity, you are nothing.” MARCH 25, 2021, VOL 57-A, ISSUE 4
