She had no idea whether it would work or backfire. Would her parents be treated worse or better in the camps with the spotlight on them? Would they be tortured? Killed? She burned inside until she couldn’t take it anymore.

On Jan. 9, she registered a new anonymous Twitter account, which she called Under Pressure, and sent out a series of tweets in Mandarin: “I have to pretend that life goes on as usual,” she began. “To others, I pretend that everything’s O.K.; to myself, I pretend I can keep holding on. I can’t bear to talk about the future. What [expletive] future? My parents are inside, and I don’t even know if they’re still alive or if any second I’m going to get a phone call saying one of them’s dead. . . . I’ve grown layer upon layer of shells — between myself and the outside world, between myself and my emotions. If I don’t feel, I won’t cry. If I don’t think about it, I won’t cry. It’s so hard that I’ve thought about dying. But I can’t now — I have to keep holding on until this is over. But holding on has gotten so hard.”

In a later tweet, she tagged an editor at Foreign Policy whom she admired. She thought he would do something to amplify her message. He retweeted an English translation of her tweets. The thread prompted some inquiries from journalists, which she ignored. She’d been able to say something, and for now that was enough.

After Zumret and her boyfriend married, she applied for a tourist visa to the United States. They had decided it would be the easiest and fastest route out of China. Once Zumret got to America, she could apply for asylum, but Humar wasn’t sure Zumret would make it out — it felt as if Uighurs were being hunted, as if anything could happen before the plane took off. So Humar threw herself into planning every aspect of her sister’s departure. She told Zumret not to tell anyone she wasn’t coming back, to say she was going to America for her “honeymoon.” On WeChat, they left bread crumbs of newlywed enthusiasm. They took care to plan things for when Zumret returned to China, in case someone checked her phone on her way out. Humar shopped online for gifts for Zumret’s husband’s family. She bought him a onesie that said, “I’m here and I understand,” which she thought might cheer her sister up. She ordered six pairs of pale blue fuzzy socks with cute animals on them, sleeping sheep with little horns. Airport security personnel would be nervous about a Uighur, she figured, so when Zumret took off her shoes going through the security line, maybe the supercute socks would ease the tension.

In early February 2019, after Zumret’s flight took off from Beijing, Humar packed to get to the airport herself. She quickly wrote the message she had been waiting months to post, on Facebook and the Twitter account under her real name. “Friends, I’m coming out as a family of the victims of China’s ethnic-cleansing concentration camps,” she wrote. “My younger sister and I lost contact with our mother in the first week of November, and we got the news of our father’s disappearance a week later. We never heard from them since then, and we don’t even know if they are alive at this point. If you find me acting weird lately, now you know why. My sister and her husband finally left Beijing this morning, got on the plane to the US. She’s finally safe and free, that’s why I’m posting this now. My parents included, at least 1 million people are suffering in China’s concentration camps, please help us. . . . I couldn’t say anything before my sister left China, past 3 months are full of pressure, anger and pain. Now my sister is safe, I’ll meet her in the US tomorrow. I have my tears ready.”

When Humar met Zumret at Kennedy International Airport, she could scarcely believe her sister was really there. The scene at the airport was just like the emoji she’d sent, of the big character patting the small one as they both cried. That emoji had become their motto — every time one of them got upset, the other patted and hugged.

They began to settle Zumret into her new American life. Humar’s declaration had been retweeted 3,000 times, and one morning while they were in their Airbnb in New Jersey, Zumret received a message from an acquaintance. Someone who worked as a doctor in the camps had met their mother. “Your mom introduced herself,” the acquaintance said. “She said she couldn’t sleep from headaches, so the doctor gave your mom some medicine.” It sounded so much like Zohre. She was proud, good at networking and passing information. If it was true, it meant that Zohre had been alive recently. Humar so badly wanted to believe it.