A young Uighur girl in Urumqi is blocked by Chinese armed police.
“Now that my children are in the hands of the Chinese Communist government, I am not sure if I will be able to meet them again in my lifetime.”
“I am one of the thousands of Uighurs whose families have been torn apart, and we have not heard from our daughters for the past 1,594 days.”
Such unbelievable tragedies of flesh and blood separation are happening to many Uyghur families. In a report released Friday (March 19), the human rights organization Amnesty International said, “The Chinese Communist Party‘s crackdown has led Uyghur families into a nightmare of separation.”
Amnesty International interviewed a number of Uighur Parents who were forcibly separated from their children and exiled overseas, and quoted in the report their testimonies that these parents simply dare not dream of the day when their children return to them.
Mihriban Kader, from Kashgar, and her husband Ablikim Memtinin were repeatedly harassed by police and asked to turn in their passports, so they fled to Italy in 2016, the report said.
Once the two fled, Mirzeban’s parents helped care for their four children, but soon after, Mirzeban’s mother was taken to a detention camp and her father was interrogated for several days and later hospitalized for months. Both children were left unsupported and uncared for.
After my parents’ accident, other relatives were afraid to take care of my children, fearing they would also be sent to a detention camp,” Mirzeban told Amnesty International.
All four of the duo’s children are minors, the youngest being 12 years old. Three of the younger children were placed in orphanages by authorities, and another was admitted to a boarding school.
In 2019, the Italian government agreed to allow the children of Mirzeban and Ablikom to travel to Italy. in June 2020, the four children set off from Kashgar on a long road to find their families.
When they arrived at the Italian consulate in Shanghai with their passports, they were refused entry and told that only the Beijing embassy could issue visas for Family reunification, but there was no way to travel to Beijing, which was by then under strict closure, Amnesty International said.
In another case, Omer Faruh and his wife Meryem Faruh, who are in Turkey, left their two young children at Home in Kulle, Xinjiang, under the care of Meryem’s parents due to circumstances.
After they lost contact with the two elderly men, they learned from a close friend that they had been taken to a detention camp, and they have not heard anything about the two children since.
I am one of thousands of Uighurs whose families have been torn apart,” Yomair told Amnesty International. …… For the past 1,594 days, we have not heard from our daughters. My wife and I try to hide our grief from the other children who are here with us, so we only cry at night.”
Alkan Akad, Amnesty International’s China researcher, said, “China’s relentless campaign of mass detentions in Xinjiang has left countless families torn apart facing a dilemma: children cannot leave China, but parents face persecution and arbitrary detention if they try to return to care for them.”
He added that the parents’ heartbreaking testimony “only scratches the surface of the suffering of separated Uighur families. The Chinese government must end its relentless policies in Xinjiang and ensure that these families are reunited as soon as possible and no longer have to fear being sent to detention camps.”
The report recommends that the Chinese government end all measures that restrict the rights of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities to travel freely to and from China, close the so-called “re-Education camps” and release detainees immediately and unconditionally, and ensure that all people in Xinjiang have regular access to family and friends, among other things.
The report also recommends that the second government ensure that all Uighurs have “access to fair and effective asylum procedures,” that it do its utmost to ensure that all Uighurs and other Chinese minorities receive consular and other appropriate assistance, and that family reunification admissions are processed “in a positive and humane manner. “family reunification entry applications.
Beijing has tightened its control and surveillance of Xinjiang’s population following the violent July 5 Uyghur-Chinese clashes in Urumqi in 2009 and the 2013 car ramming of Uyghur Muslims into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Since Chen Guoduo took charge of Xinjiang in August 2016 and promulgated “de-extremism” regulations in early 2017, authorities have significantly intensified the scale and extent of their crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
Some international human rights organizations say at least one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are being held in detention camps in the XUAR. In the camps they are allegedly subjected to human rights violations such as torture, forced labor, forced sterilization, forced abortion, rape and sexual abuse, and political indoctrination.
China has consistently denied the mistreatment of Uighurs and the existence of detention camps. China claims the detention camps are vocational and technical education centers designed to de-extremism and help lift regional populations out of poverty. China has also said that there has never been any so-called “genocide,” “forced labor,” or “religious oppression” in the Xinjiang region.
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