In a book-lined apartment in Zeytinburnu, Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur activist and poet, coaches Amina Abduwayit, the businesswoman who fled Xinjiang after police took her DNA. They’re filming a video they plan to upload to Facebook. Ayup films her on his smartphone, while she sits at a table and recounts how her home city of Urumqi was a “digital prison.” Abduwayit describes how they were afraid to turn the lights on early in the morning, for fear the police would think they were praying. She then lists all the members of her family whom she believes have been transferred to detention centers. Abuwayit is just one of hundreds of Uyghurs in Turkey – and thousands across the world – who have decided to upload their story to the internet.
Since this time last year, a kind of digital revolution has taken place. The Finland-based Uyghur activist Halmurat Harri believes he was the first person to film a testimonial. “I want freedom for my parents, freedom for Uyghur,” he said in a cell phone video filmed from his bathroom in Helsinki last April, before shaving off his hair in protest. “Then I called people and asked them to make their own testimony videos,” Harri told me.
Videos filmed on smartphones from Uyghur kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms began appearing on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Ayup described how at the beginning, people would “cover their faces and were afraid of their voices being recognized,” but as 2018 progressed, people became braver.
Gene Bunin, a scholar based in Central Asia , manages the volunteer-run Xinjiang Victims Database, and has catalogued thousands of testimonials from Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Muslim minorities targeted in Xinjiang.
“There’s evidence the government is willing to make concessions for those whose relatives give video testimonies,” Bunin said. He was told of people being released as little as 24 hours after their relatives posted their testimonies online. “It’s a strong sign the Xinjiang authorities are reacting to these videos,” he said.
China has recently stepped up its defense of practices in Xinjiang, seemingly in response to Western attention. In March, Reuters reported that China would invite European diplomats to visit the region. It followed a statement by Xinjiang governor Shohrat Zakir that the camps were in fact “boarding schools.”
This spring, Harri started a hashtag, #MeTooUyghur, encouraging Uyghurs around the world to demand evidence that their families were alive.
Large WhatsApp news groups, with members from the international Uyghur diaspora, have also been a vital source of solidarity for a community deprived of information.
On December 24, 2018, Kalbinur Tursun – the woman who left five of her children in Xinjiang – was sitting in the ladies’ clothing shop she manages in Zeytinburnu, scrolling through a Uyghur WhatsApp group. She checks it first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and dozens of times throughout the day, as several hundred Uyghur members post near-constant videos and updates on the crisis in Xinjiang.
She tapped on a video of a room full of Uyghur children, playing a game. An off-camera voice shouts “Bizi! Bizi! Bizi!”– Chinese for “Nose! Nose! Nose!” and an excited group of children tap their noses. Tursun was astonished. On the left, she recognized her six-year old-daughter, Aisha. “Her emotion, her laugh… it’s her. It’s like a miracle,” she said. “I see my child so much in my dreams, I never imagined I would see her in real life.” It had been two years since she had last heard her daughter’s voice.
The video appears to come from one of the so-called “Little Angel Schools” in Hotan province, around 300 miles from Tursun’s native Kashgar, where it’s been reported nearly 3,000 Uyghur children are held. Tursun wonders whether her four other children may have been taken even further afield. Speaking to Radio Free Asia, a Communist Party official for the province said the orphanages were patrolled by police to “provide security.”
Unlike almost everyone in the global Uyghur diaspora, Nurjamal Atawula managed to find a way to contact her family after the WeChat blackout. She used one of the oldest means possible: writing a letter. In late 2016, she heard of a woman in Zeytinburnu who regularly traveled back and forth between Turkey and her parents’ village in Xinjiang. She asked the woman to take a letter to her family. The woman agreed. Atawula wrote to her brother and was careful not to include anything border inspection or police might be able to use against him.
“When I was writing the letter, I felt I was living in the dark ages,” Atawula said. She gave it to the woman, along with small presents for her children and money she had saved for her family.
A month later, she got a reply. The Uyghur woman, who she calls “sister”, smuggled a letter from her brother out of China, hidden in a packet of tissues.
Atawula sent a reply with her go-between – but after the third trip, the woman disappeared. Atawula doesn’t know what happened to her. She still writes to her family, but her letters are now kept in a diary, in the hope that one day her children will be able to read them.
It has now been more than two years since Atawula received her brother’s letter. She keeps it carefully folded, still in the tissue it came in. In that time, she has only read the words three times, as if by looking at them too much they will lose their power.
My Beautiful Sister,
How are you? After you left Urumqi we couldn’t contact you, but when we got your letter we were so pleased. I have so many words for you… maybe after we reunite we will be able to say them to one another. You said you miss your children. May Allah give you patience. Mother, me and the relatives all miss you very much. We have so many hopes for you. Please be strong and don’t worry about the children.
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