More than three years after her father, a retired government official in Chinas Uighur region, was arrested, Subi Mamat Yuksel finally spoke up about her familys ordeal. The violations may have followed official Chinese directives, but the abuse was so severe that Beijings use of fear as a tool to silence Uighur families has backfired.
Advertising
Read more
On April 29, 2017, Subi Mamat Yuksels parents were at home in Urumqi, the main city in the Uighur region of northwestern China, packing for their flight to the US the next day. Her father, a retired government official, told his wife he was just stepping out to buy last-minute gifts for their grandchildren in the Virginia area. He never returned.
It was the start of an Orwellian ordeal that would plunge the family into a trauma of existential proportions, a nightmare that is likely being shared by millions of people of Chinese Uighur descent across the world as Beijing conducts a crushing human and cultural reordering in Xinjiang, Chinas largest province, which borders eight countries.
Yuksels father, Mamat Abdullah, 75, was a longtime forestry department chief in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Zone (XUAR) and a public figure in the Uighur community, a majority Muslim, Turkic-speaking minority. His four-decades in the XUAR administrative service included a posting as mayor of Korla, Xinjiangs second largest city.
Two of his three children – Yuksel and her elder brother, Iskandar Mamat – had studied and settled in the US. Ever since their children arrived in America in 2007, the couple visited frequently, bearing gifts and local delicacies for family events.
The April 2017 trip was to see the latest addition to the family, Iskandars newborn son, and it was not expected to be any different from past visits. Little did the family know that they were about to embark on a long, dark journey that would test their resilience and relations.
“When my Dad didnt return, my Mum tried calling him, but there was no answer and she started worrying,” recounted the 31-year-old mother of three in a phone interview with FRANCE 24 from Virginia. “Hours later, two security officers came home and said my Dad was with them. They took my parents passports and told my Mum they were not going anywhere. They knew my parents were leaving for the US.”
Chinas crackdown on the Uighurs and other minority ethnic groups in Xinjiang has been systematically targeted at different demographic groups since the clampdown began in 2014 following deadly attacks in the region, which Chinese authorities blamed on Uighur militants.
The Uighur crackdown intensified in 2017 – the year of Abdullahs arrest – with mass detentions in sprawling internment camps in the remote region. Experts such as Adrian Zenz, a leading researcher on the Uighur crisis, describe the incarceration of over a million people as “probably the worlds largest internment of a ethno-religious minority group since the Holocaust”.
A form of demographic genocide
Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps and later euphemistically described them as “reeducation centres”. But the real intent of Chinas pacification operation has emerged in chilling detail over the past few months with the publication of leaks and open source official documents by investigative news teams.
Earlier this week, an AP investigation based on Zenzs analysis of government statistics and documents revealed Chinas measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other ethnic minorities using forced contraception in what experts call “a form of demographic genocide”.
In November, the New York Times published a detailed report of the orchestrated crackdown based on 403 documents leaked from inside Chinas ruling Communist Party. They included an official booklet on how to deceive Uighur family members living outside the region who inquire about disappeared relatives.
The directives appear to have been systematically followed in Abdullahs case, including the use of surveillance, fake news and fear as a tool to try to stop the Uighur diaspora from speaking out.
We cant really chat on WeChat
Yuksels personal nightmare began before dawn on April 29, 2017, when her brother knocked on her door in Manassas, Virginia, to inform her their parents werent going to make it to the US. The details were sketchy: their older sister in Urumqi had called Iskandar and only told him to cancel the flight tickets.
“He noticed from her voice that something was wrong, but my sister couldnt talk about the real situation and he didnt ask much,” said Yuksel.
The family uses WeChat, the do-everything app described as “the Chinese Facebook, Twitter, Google, WhatsApp, Tinder all rolled in one”. Users know the app is a giant Communist Party surveillance tool, but they have little choice since most apps are banned in China.
Under the circumstances, communication with China-based family members is fraught with silences, blather to ward off suspicions, facial signs and codes created on the fly.
But when Yuksel finally got through to her then 61-year-old mother, there was no hiding the distress.
“My mother was sobbing. She was so scared, she was shivering,” said Yuksel, her voice quivering with the recollection. “She was shaking, she was showing me her arms, she was holding her wrists together,” to signal her husband had been arrested.
“It was 2017, we already knew things were going bad for Uighurs in the area. But we tried to stay calm. My father had worked for the government for more than 40 years, we knew the news of former department chiefs getting arrested in corruption cases. My father had retired almost 10 years ago, but my brother said may be theyre investigating something and want to question him and will then release him,” she said.
Two-faced, three charges
But the accusations were a lot more serious. Abdullah – or Maimaiti Abudula in Mandarin – was charged with bribery, being “two-faced” and a separatist, Yuksel explained.
Bribery is a common accusation against Chinese government officials under President Xi Jinpings sweeping anti-corruption drive. Since Abdullah had retired nearly a decade before the charges were filed, the family believed it was the least serious.
“Two-faced” is a term frequently used by authorities for Uighur cadres and intellectuals who have lost their old role as mediators between the Communist Party and the community. Over the past three years, several Xinjiang university professors and presidents have been fired and put into “reeducation” camps for being “two-faced” or paying lip service to the ruling party while their loyalties lie with their ethnic group.
The separatist charge, Yuksel notes was “because of me and my brother. We live in Virginia, theres a large Uighur community here, its close to Washington DC, all the protests are in this area and China doesnt like this area,” she explained.
Nowhere safe: silencing the diaspora
Chinas targeting of the diaspora has been documented in an Amnesty report, “Nowhere Feels Safe”, which noted that several Uighurs abroad said they were “warned that family members would be detained if they did not return to Xinjiang or that they would not be able to see their family again if they did not provide information on other Uyghurs [sic] living in their community”.
Information on family members in the US appeared to be the focus of the questioning Yuksels mother and sister were subjected to for months for Abdullahs arrest.
“For the first two months, my mother and sister were taken for questioning almost every single day for eight straight hours,” she said. “My mother and sister didnt tell me exactly what happened, but they were mad at us because the brainwashing there is so strong. They [Chinese security officials] tell you its because your son and daughter abroad are enemies of the Chinese government. I cannot blame my mother and sister,” she insisted. “I could sense the questioning was so intense, they couldnt bear it. Instead of getting angry with their interrogators, they got angry with us.”
A letter from her father in an unknown detention camp, a photograph of which was sent to Yuksel, had clearer signs of intimidation.
“My Dad is known for his beautiful handwriting in Han Chinese and our Uighur language. The letter started with his beautiful writing. But in the parts he accused us and told us to come back and apologise to the country, the handwriting was so bad, it was obvious they forced my Dad to write that letter to us,” she explained.
Guilty as planned, sentenced to life
The family in Urumqi meanwhile were not given access to Abdullah or told of his whereabouts. They only saw him more than two years later, at his first court hearing in September 2019.
It was a traumatic experience.
Yuksels mother was denied access into the court, but her elder sister was allowed in after kicking up a fuss. “My mother was sitting on a bench outside and she saw my Dad being taken into court in chains with other prisoners. They tried to make eye contact, but the police pushed him. He had lost weight and couldnt balance himself. That broke my Mums heart seeing Dad in that state,” explained Yuksel. “My poor sister had to stay calm in court. She had to stay strong, silently, trying to make eye contact with my Dad, trying not to cry.”
The verdict was delivered at the end of the court session that barely granted her fathers lawyer the opportunity to defend his client. Abdullah was found guilty on all counts.
The family filed an appeal but heard nothing until the lawyer phoned to inform them a follow-up trial had been held in December 2019. The guilty verdict was upheld. Abdullah was sentenced to life in prison, the family was informed.
“My sister went to the lawyer and tried to get a copy or at least take a photograph of the order. But the lawyer refused, she kept pleading, How can I remember this? But the lawyer was very rude. Hes Han Chinese, theres really no law there, its useless even hiring a lawyer,” she sighed.
Hunger in the Covid-19 era
The life in prison sentence, with no further course of repeal, was the final straw for Yuksel and her brother in Virginia. “For three years, we said nothing. We felt guilty, but we didnt want to do anything that would endanger him. My mother and sister said it would be used as evidence against him. We were so afraid,” Yuksel explained.
With the sentencing, Yuksel and Iskandar concluded they had nothing left to lose. The coronavirus outbreak had by then shut down parts of China. Concerns over the spread of the disease in crowded detention camps were mounting.
The complete media blackout made it impossible to ascertain the situation inside the camps. But on the streets, the distress could not be hidden. Video clips emerged of residents screaming at officials that their families were starving. Old Uighur men caught on the streets flouting lockdown rules calmly asked officials if they were supposed to eat buildings.
Read More – Source
[contf] [contfnew] 
france24
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
