Uighurs live with fear, trauma as families remain stranded in China's growing 're-education camps'

Updated

Last year, when Almas Nizamidin returned to Urumqi — the capital city of China's far-west region of Xinjiang — he was on a mission to find his wife who had been taken from her home by several plain-clothes policemen under no official charge.

Key points: There are increasing reports that Uighurs are being sent to "re-education camps"

Uighurs are reportedly forced to denounce Islam and pledge loyalty to Beijing

Many say they live in fear of being targeted in Australia

Beijing maintains that it has no comment or does not know about the reports

The 27-year-old construction worker from Adelaide, who became an Australian citizen in 2014 after leaving China in 2009, flew back immediately after hearing the news of his wife, only to find the city he grew up in completely unrecognisable.

"It looked like an occupation," he said.

"There were lines of tanks on the streets, and a police blockhouse every 100 metres where police officers scan people's IDs and the contents of their phones," he said.

When his wife Buzainafu Abudourexiti was taken away in March 2017 — initially for "re-education" but later sentenced to seven years in prison — she was 25 years old and two months pregnant.

Mr Nizamidin said her crime was said to be "religious extremism", because she used to undertake Islamic studies in the Middle East.

The young couple are Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking ethnic minority in Xinjiang province, the nominally Uighur Autonomous Region. Most Uighurs are Muslim, and Islam is an important part of the Uighur culture, which resembles Central Asian cultures rather than traditional Chinese culture.

But now, under Beijing's sweeping "re-education campaign" targeting the Uighurs and their religion, the Uighur culture and identity are in danger of being wiped out, rights groups and experts say.

'Talk to Almas, he has lost everything'

Since last spring, at least several hundred thousand and possibly more than 1 million ethnic minorities — mostly Uighur — in Xinjiang have been interned in mass detention facilities, according to a series of recent commissions and reports.

"[The detention campaign is] the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today," a United States commission on China said back in April.

Australia is home to a tight-knit Uighur community of an estimated 600 families, with a combined population of over 3,000 people. Most Uighurs live in Adelaide, with other Muslim minorities who have also been targets of the crackdown.

The ABC interviewed about 20 Uighur individuals from different walks of life in Australia — workers, businessmen, university students, housewives, as well as activists in exile.

Almost all of them have family members or friends currently detained in China, but many refused to speak on the record, worrying their words could embroil family members still living in China.

"Talk to Almas, he has lost everything, so he can talk," one Uighur man told the ABC in Melbourne.

The ABC sought comment from various Chinese authorities multiple times about the treatment of Uighurs but has not received any comment, however, China's Foreign Ministry recently told reporters it "had not heard" of the situation while maintaining that Beijing protects the rights of foreigners.

Chinese socialism entering 'new era' with mass detention

The detainees of the "re-education camps", roughly 10 per cent of the whole Uighur population in the region, are reportedly forced to chant slogans, watch propaganda videos, denounce their religion and pledge loyalty to the communist party in overcrowded cells.

The Chinese crackdown on Uighurs started in the 1990s, when ethnic frictions flared amid calls for independence of the Uighur people of Xinjiang province.

The long term goal of the Chinese government in Xinjiang has been to alleviate tensions, and beliefs were that efforts to improve the economy would help, James Millward, a historian at Georgetown University told the ABC.

Over the past three decades, the economy of the region has improved, so has transportation and communications to other parts of Central Asia, but the interethnic relations between Uighurs and the majority Han have vastly deteriorated.

There has long been repression of religious freedoms and reports of ongoing discrimination against Uighur people, but the recent reports of a shift to mass detention coincides with the claim that Chinese socialism is entering a "new era", David Brophy, a senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney said.

"The presence of a large, discontented minority simply doesn't fit the official vision of a nation uniting to realise what Xi Jinping calls the 'Chinese Dream'," Dr Brophy said.

'We have raised these concerns with China': DFAT

The Chinese Government has regularly cited outside influences, namely religious extremism and separatism, as a justification for its Uighur crackdown.

It is true that some Uighurs have found their way into the ranks of Islamist militias in Syria and Iraq, believing that by obtaining military training and international jihadist solidarity, they'll be able to one day take the fight back to Xinjiang.

"But China maintains a choke hold on Xinjiang's entry and exit points, and this strategy is no threat to Beijing's rule — certainly not one that could justify today's crackdown," Dr Brophy said.

A Human Rights Watch report said efforts to snuff out the "outside influences" and "religious extremism"— recently enabled by high-tech mass surveillance technologies — have developed into a campaign far broader and much more arbitrary against anyone suspected of political disloyalty, which in Xinjiang could mean any Uighur, particularly those who express, even peacefully, their religious or cultural identity.

In today's Xinjiang, growing a beard, praying regularly, or contacting people overseas can all lead to one being sentenced to prison or sent to the so-called "re-education camps" to undergo "thought transformation through education".

"In Xinjiang, it is a massive crime to be Uighur, to be an ethnic minority," Mr Nizamidin said, "people, like lambs waiting to be killed, have lost hope."

Some elements of the "re-education camps" resemble China's Cultural Revolution, as the campaign uses coercive means to try to change people's attitudes, Professor Millward added.

"Such ethnic and religious targeting of an entire ethnic group and the use of mass incarcerations reflect some very dark historical precedents," he said.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said "Australia is concerned about the growing number of reports of mistreatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang".

"We have raised these concerns with China," DFAT said.

Uighurs living in fear and trauma in Australia

Discussion of the situation in Xinjiang brings up fear and still-raw emotions. Some interviewees burst into tears at the mention of the issue.

"At home I don't allow these talks to open up in the house, I just try to change the subject," said Abdul-Salam Alim, a 45-year-old Uighur man and a religious teacher at Garden College, a Muslim community school in Adelaide.

"Because I know if I talk, someone will start [getting emotional] … they lose it," Mr Alim said.

Mr Alim's wife has five siblings who live in the Xinjiang city of Hotan. According to Mr Alim, every adult of the five families except for one has been detained or imprisoned, and this leaves 21 children in the care of the only one woman who's free in the whole family.

As Mr Alim spoke, his mother-in-law — the grandmother of the alleged 21 children — sat and listened, quietly weeping.

Later when asked how she had felt about the situation back home, Mr Alim's mother-in-law said through an interpreter that she hadn't spoken to any of her children — except for the daughter in Australia — for nearly 18 months.

"I can't imagine how the minor kids are surviving without parental care," she said.

In August 2017, an Australian man who is a Uighur was arrested on his arrival in China's Chengdu airport, and was subsequently detained for more than 20 days without charge, sources told the ABC.

DFAT confirmed that they provided assistance to a man who matches the description, but were unable to provide further information due to privacy obligations, according to a spokesperson.

'Beijing, is this what you mean by unity?'

Another Uighur man with Australian citizenship, who asked to be referred to as "Sam", described to the ABC how he was assaulted by more than a dozen police officers when he showed his Australian passport at a checkpoint in Urumqi in 2016.

One officer said to him "you think you are Australian?", and shoved the passport in his face, Sam said.

"I was pushing and saying 'what are you doing?' I said [to the officer] 'you could not do that'.

"Then more than 15 of them came and started bashing me.

"The next thing I could remember I was in the hospital."

Elminur grew up in Xinjiang's Ghulja and came here in 2009. The 20-year-old student asked that her last name be held as she still has family in China — she said she remembers being told in school not to practice prayers.

"Growing up I was scared of praying," she said, "when I first came here I was hesitant to join religious rituals."

A Uighur high school student, who came to Adelaide from Ghulja three years ago, recounted memories of Ramadan in Xinjiang, when students at her school were asked to sign a contract and promise not to fast or go to mosques.

In March, during a protest in Canberra, the student, 17, made a powerful speech in front of the Chinese embassy.

"Chinese government, you have said you want unity of different ethnic groups," she said.

"You have said you want all ethnic groups to embrace each other like a 'pomegranate'.

"Then you started your re-education camps in Xinjiang ... where you detain hundreds of thousands Muslim minorities.

"Is this what you mean by unity of ethnic groups?"

Uighurs feel at a loss as hopes for coexistence fades

Far away from checkpoints and detention camps, the Uighur community in Australia has carved out a space for themselves where they proudly celebrate and preserve the Uighur culture, and also freely discuss politics — to some extent.

For many of them, it used to be unimaginable to criticise the Chinese government or call for independence from China.

But as the crackdown at home turns their homeland into what may resemble a police state, many Uighurs say peaceful coexistence of Han Chinese and Uighurs under Chinese rule is no longer plausible long-term.

Activists openly campaign for an independent state of East Turkestan, and are torn by the consequences that their family members in China are targets of the crackdown.

Many in the Uighur community in Australia told the ABC they feel hopeless, helpless, and unable to trust anyone.

The ABC has contacted the Chinese embassy in Canberra, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, and various authorities in China for comment but all attempts have gone unanswered.

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, government-and-politics, religion-and-beliefs, human-rights, islam, china, australia

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