A testimony from our “100 Camp Testimonies” Book
I would like to testify for my father Qurban Mamut, and to give an additional testimony for the destruction of mosques in East Turkistan.
My father, born in 1950, is a prominent Uyghur intellectual, a husband, a father, and a grandfather, who earned his bachelor’s degree in literature from Xinjiang University in 1976. He worked as a journalist and editor for the official Xinjiang People’s Radio Station until 1984. He started working for the Xinjiang Cultural Journal in 1985, which was directly supervised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and retired as editor-in-chief in 2011. During his career, he was known for selecting various literary works of the most influential writers on Uyghur culture, history, politics, and social development for publication. My father played an important role in illuminating a portion of the Uyghur population, and contributed his part to spread and produce ethnic consciousness among the Uyghurs. The main goal of the journal was to help Uyghurs understand themselves, educating them in their own culture and history. The essays and articles published in the journal provided some thoughts behind Uyghurs’ reality, indicating the importance of keeping the Uyghur culture alive for the coming generations.
All publication had been under strict government scrutiny, and my father always cautiously worked with important works of literature by Uyghur authors that entailed sensitive topics, tiptoeing around the CCP guidelines.
Since 2017, the CCP red line was moved in the direction of less tolerance. Suddenly, the Chinese regime targeted/interned more than 380 Uyghur intellectuals (including my father) who had in the past successfully navigated academia, the art world, and journalism in the Uyghur region. I was not surprised to learn that my father was persecuted among countless many other Uyghurs following the regime’s mass internment campaign.
In February 2017, my parents visited us and spent a month in the United States. Within months after returning home, my father disappeared. I learned that my father was taken to an internment camp around April 2017.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) first reported on my father’s internment back in October 2018,[1] and in its later reporting in June 2020,[2] RFA confirmed my father’s internment after contacting the Xinjiang Hall of Public Culture. The staffer that answered the reporter’s call said, “He (my father) is currently classified as a ‘detained person’.”
The Chinese authorities have blocked all channels of overseas communications to my family members since February 2018. Like many others in Uyghur diaspora, I lost all contact with my family back home. All I know is that my father was arbitrarily detained, and I do not know where he is incarcerated.
I feared the worst-case scenario. During their internment or on account of their internment, some prominent Uyghur intellectuals and scholars died in internment camps, or shortly after their release. Allow me to present to you two such examples:
The prominent Uyghur writer Nurmuhemmet Tohti, who was my father’s best friend, died following his internment in 2019.[3] Muhammad Salih Hajim, a prominent Uyghur Islamic scholar, died while incarcerated in an internment at the age 82 in 2018.[4]
My father is in his 70s and he is a well-known figure in Uyghur society, and I feared he might have already died in an internment camp due to either torture or the appalling sanitary conditions. I have not been able to obtain any information about his whereabouts since his internment in 2017, and if he indeed died while incarcerated in a camp, the Chinese regime must have chosen to keep it a secret as I have actively spoken out on social media about my father’s unjust internment.
However, in early 2022, I learned that my father, Qurban Mamut, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, which was confirmed by the Radio Free Asia Uyghur service on March 30, 2022.[5]
Destruction of Mosques
Uyghur traditional and religious architectural practice is an issue close to my heart.
The destruction of Uyghur sacred sites, cemeteries, and mosques in East Turkistan started circa 2015/2016, during which time I closely followed the reporting of RFA. Since 2018 the rate at which mosques were destroyed or damaged was alarming. In early 2019, some activists on social media such as Twitter claimed that the Chinese regime had been destroying historic mosques across East Turkistan. I wanted to check these claims myself, so I started checking all the historical mosques that I knew of in the Uyghur region whether they had been destroyed or damaged.
As a matter of fact, within three months I was able to confirm the destruction of 31 mosques by analyzing satellite images. After I published my findings, including the geolocation data of a list of demolished mosques on my website,[6] The Guardian[7]and Agence France-Presse (AFP)[8] reported on the destruction of Uyghur mosques and sacred sites. In their reports, they both drew on my previously published geolocation data of the list of 31 demolished Uyghur mosques. It was the first time the mainstream news outlets brought important pieces of evidence to the attention of the international community. On October 28, 2019, in collaboration with the Uyghur Human Rights Project, I published my report Demolishing Faith: The Destruction and Desecration of Uyghur Mosques and Shrines.[9]
In the report, I compiled a list of fully demolished or partially damaged mosques, shrines, and cemeteries, and provided evidence for over 100 mosques, where the complete destruction or removals of Islamic architectural features (e.g. dome, minaret) had taken place. The Chinese regime’s mosque demolition campaign began on a large scale in 2016, and it termed its campaign as “Mosque Rectification Program,” with the intent of sinicizing the Islamic architectural elements. I interviewed 10 Uyghurs with regard to the demolition of mosques in their hometowns and included some of the testimonies in the report. I also estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 mosques, shrines, and cemeteries had been either fully demolished or partially damaged, or had had their Islamic architectural features removed. This estimation was made in 2019, and the suggested numbers must have increased in the following years.
The demolition of traditional Uyghur houses and neighborhoods is equally disturbing, which has been transpiring since 2018. One of my findings indicates that the Uyghur neighborhoods, the size of 750 football fields, in Kuchar County alone, had been completely demolished in a matter of months. The intent of the demolition was to build new residential buildings to house newly arrived Chinese migrants. In the past, it was impossible to completely demolish so many Uyghur neighborhoods in such a short span of time. I suppose the Chinese regime has carried out large-scale demolitions without any obstacles because of the ongoing mass internment of Uyghurs that started circa 2017.
Many demolished mosques and cemeteries were located within or close to the demolished Uyghur neighborhoods. The intentional demolition of mosques and other religious sites across East Turkistan is a part of the Chinese regime’s efforts to eradicate Uyghur identity, which is corroborated by the satellite imagery.Most of these demolished Uyghur neighborhoods/towns had been home to Uyghurs for centuries, where the traditional Uyghur houses showcased magnificent Uyghur architecture and unique designs, constituting an important part of Uyghur culture and history that should be protected not destroyed. My personal understanding is that the demolition of Uyghur neighborhoods constitutes one of the most important pieces of evidence for the ongoing Uyghur genocide.
[1] Hoja, Gulchehra. (2018, October 18). Xinjiang Authorities Detain Prominent Uyghur Journalist in Political ‘Re-Education Camp’. Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service, and edited by Joshua Lipes. Radio Free Asia. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/journalist-10182018151224.html
[2] Hoshur, Shohret. (2020, June 9). Prominent Uyghur Journalist Confirmed Detained After Nearly Three Years. Translated by Elise Anderson, and edited by Joshua Lipes. Radio Free Asia. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/detained-06092020170643.html?searchterm:utf8:ustring=%20qurban
[3] Hoshur, Shohret. (2019, June 17). Prominent Uyghur Writer Dies After Being Deprived Treatment in Xinjiang Internment Camp. Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service, and edited by Joshua Lipes. Radio Free Asia. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/writer-06172019105544.html
[4] Hoshur, Shohret, and Alim Seytoff. (2018, January 29). Uyghur Muslim Scholar Dies in Chinese Police Custody. Translated by Alim Seytoff, and edited by Paul Eckert. Radio Free Asia. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/scholar-death-01292018180427.html
[5] The news report is written in Uyghur, see https://www.rfa.org/uyghur/xewerler/qurban-mamut-03302022163023.html?fbclid=IwAR2vbghweb7Y9diO51BUTHbYG-xsP16S5LN4cROL_p8zfH8J0BCGJTkB0yo
[6] Available at https://www.uyghurism.com/culturalgenocide
[7] Kuo, Lily. (2019, May 7). Revealed: new evidence of China’s mission to raze the mosques of Xinjiang. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/07/revealed-new-evidence-of-chinas-mission-to-raze-the-mosques-of-xinjiang
[8] Xiao, Eva, and Pak Yiu. (2019, June 8). Razed mosques and pervasive surveillance make for a tense Ramadan in China’s Xinjiang. AFP. https://hongkongfp.com/2019/06/08/razed-mosques-pervasive-surveillance-make-tense-ramadan-chinas-xinjiang/
[9] Available at https://uhrp.org/report/demolishing-faith-destruction-and-desecration-uyghur-mosques-and-shrines-html/ or https://docs.uhrp.org/pdf/UHRP_report_Demolishing_Faith.pdf
