A testimony from our “100 Camp Testimonies” Book
I was born on January 20, 1983. I currently live in Turkey, and I first came to this country on June 12, 2013. I would like to testify for my wife, my children and my parents.
I got married in August 2007, and I had been doing jewelry business in Ürümchi until 2013.
My parents lived in two different cities in East Turkistan: my mother in Ghulja and my father in Aksu. My mother was a housewife, and because of the harsh policies in Aksu, she moved to Ghulja. It was more difficult to get a passport in Aksu due to the local restrictive measures, so I got my passport in Ghulja instead, and I traveled to Mecca in 2013. I was just a businessman and I was neither involved in politics nor in activism.
In 2013, I decided to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and my original plan was to return home after the pilgrimage. However, before my return trip, the Chinese authorities discovered that I had traveled abroad, which was considered suspicious by the regime at the time. A policeman paid my father a visit and asked him where I had got my passport from. The authorities in Aksu, where my father lived, were not aware of the fact that I had got my passport from Ghulja, where my mother lived. My family warned me that the police were after me, so it was dangerous for me to return.
Therefore, I decided to go to Turkey. Initially, I was in contact with my wife and parents through regular phone calls. My wife lived in Ürümchi at the time and our phone calls were monitored. She was summoned by the police for interrogation because my wife received international calls. Her SIM card was nullified, so I lost contact with her for some time. However, I began using WeChat to contact my wife.
The last time I heard from her was on April 10, 2017. She mentioned that we shouldn’t contact each other anymore; moreover, she was asked to go to work in a factory in another city. I asked her not to go as we have three children: a girl born on February 29, 2009; a boy born on November 18, 2011; and another boy born on July 3, 2013 (after I had left Ürümchi). But my wife said that she didn’t have a choice. At the time, I did not know that the factory she was referring to was actually an internment camp. I got this information from a friend of my wife, who also helped my wife download the messaging app WeChat. This friend informed me that my wife was taken to a “small camp”, which was code for an internment camp (i.e. “reeducation” camp) on WeChat so as to avoid censorship, while a “big camp” was code for a prison. My wife was born in 1989, and she married me when she was 17. She was a housewife and never got involved in political activism, nor did she commit any crime.
I managed to contact my mother only once after I left East Turkistan. I decided to avoid contacting her in order not to get her in trouble. I was in regular contact with my father until August 2014. I used regular phone calls to reach him as he did not know how to use social media such as WeChat. I tried to call him again, but someone else answered the phone. When I asked if he knew my father, he said he didn’t know such person. The above-mentioned friend of my wife also informed me later that my father was taken to a prison.
In June 2018, I decided to become more active and demand justice for my family. I started speaking out on social media, demanding that the Chinese regime release my family members. I was then contacted by an Uyghur official on WeChat, who sent me photos of my children, warning me that if I cooperated with the Chinese authorities, my children would be taken care of. I still have these photos on my phone. I refused to cooperate with the Chinese regime. I argued that, as a father, I have the right to contact my children, and I demanded that the Chinese authorities release my children, my wife and my father.
Since I was not willing to cooperate with the Chinese regime, the Chinese official informed me that my children would be taken to an orphanage.
In 2020, I tried to reach out to one of my friends who lived in inner China to inquire about my family’s situation. However, this person was not able to obtain any new information. I do not know what may have happened to my family, and I am worried that something serious has happened to them. My father and my wife are good citizens and there’s no reason for the Chinese regime to persecute them. My father was originally a farmer, and he also worked as a craftsman. However, it is worth mentioning that, between 1998 and 2000, my father was sentenced to two years in prison because he had published a piece of article that was critical of the Chinese regime.
