Story by: Yakin Ouederni
Graphics by: Callie Riek
Pacing across her dorm room in Duke University’s West Campus, senior Aydin Anwar knows she should start the 10-page paper she has due in a couple of days, or the 20-page one due next week. Instead, she reaches for her phone and checks Twitter. Facebook. Twitter again.
She looks at her pinned tweet:
One of my relatives just got sentenced to 15 years of prison by China for no crime at all. He will be tortured and only God knows if he’ll come out alive. (duas please)
And he’s only one of millions of Uyghurs being arbitrarily locked up by China as it commits ethnic cleansing.
— Aydin Anwar (@aydinanwar_) August 29, 2018
“One of my relatives just got sentenced to 15 years of prison by China for no crime at all.
And he’s only one of millions of Uyghurs being arbitrarily locked up by China as it
commits ethnic cleansing.”
It now has more than 3,700 retweets.
Anwar emails her professors asking for paper extensions; there’s other work she must get to. She is speaking at the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement rally in Washington, D.C., and needs to prepare her speech.
********
East Turkistan, a mineral-rich region in eastern Asia, is home to the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority of about 15 million. China occupied East Turkistan in 1949, and has since then politically suppressed the Uyghurs to restrain separatist movements. Today, the Chinese government’s efforts have expanded to religious and cultural persecution.
Up to one million Uyghurs are being detained in government re-education camps, according to reports verified by the United Nations. These have been compared to internment camps with the intention to culturally and religiously indoctrinate Uyghurs. Reports of torture and malnutrition are widespread.
Uyghurs are prohibited from practicing Islam and speaking their native language, and the region is abound with checkpoints and surveillance cameras to keep tight watch on their activities.
The Chinese government is said to carry out these actions under the pretense of combating Islamic extremism.
Based in the U.S., the Awakening Movement is an international organization that aims to restore the independence of East Turkistan.
“They are stripping away everything that is Uyghur including the culture, the religion, and the identity,” Anwar said. “And no one is saying anything about it.”
The Chinese government renamed the region Xinjiang Province, “New Territory,” although Anwar and many other Uyghurs continue to use “East Turkistan” to delegitimize the occupation. Anwar is one of three Uyghur-American staff members at the Awakening Movement working to provoke political action against the Chinese government and raise awareness.
An estimated five-to-15,000 Uyghurs reside in the U.S., many of whom are asylum seekers. Anwar’s father, Anwar Yusuf Turani, was the first Uyghur granted political asylum in the U.S., having fled Xinjiang in 1988. Here, he founded the East Turkistan Independence Movement and became a leading voice in the fight for Uyghur rights.
“When I told other Uyghurs here that I want to start an independence movement they laughed at me and said I was crazy,” he said. “But now people are becoming informed and they’re joining us in demonstration.”
From a young age, Anwar and her three siblings were trained by their father to be politically active and to mobilize.
“This has become part of our DNA,” Turani said. “They will carry my legacy and regain our freedom.”
And that’s what Anwar has been trying to do, juggling course work with facilitating an independence movement that no one seems to know or care about.
“It does get exhausting,” she said. “But I’m in this privileged bubble and have the ability to speak, so I can’t leave this issue hanging while my people are dying.”
As the media and press relations officer for the Awakening Movement, Anwar helps organize rallies, speaks at events, and has appeared on news programs like NowThis and The Stream to help the issue gain recognition.
And recognition is what the movement needs most. Receiving attention in a world crowded with humanitarian crises has proven to be difficult for the Uyghurs. The re-education camps have been around since 2016, but it wasn’t until late August 2018 that the U.N. acknowledged them.
The Chinese government’s progression from political restraint to the operation of internment camps seems to result from a looming threat of undermined sovereignty.
“Xinjiang is like Tibet,” said Dr. Darren Byler, a lecturer at the University of Washington, whose research focuses on Uyghur dispossession. “Each have territorial claim, their own state prior to Chinese occupation, so China sees them as an existential threat to the unity of the nation.”
China had claimed that its crackdowns in Xinjiang were part of the Global War on Terror and started labeling all Uyghur political activity as terrorism instead of separatism.
“Calling it terrorism makes it so that anything the Uyghurs do is evil and unjustifiable, so the government can do whatever it wants to these people,” Byler said.
When the internet arrived in Xinjiang in 2010, Uyghurs were able to access more information about Islam and connect with people in Muslim majority countries. A spike in religiosity became apparent, and the government grew concerned by this new form of empowerment.
“When I was in Xinjiang in 2014 the mosques were so full,” Byler said. “I visited again in April 2018, and no one was going to the mosques anymore.”
Uyghurs can’t get caught praying, fasting, wearing the hijab, growing out beards, or even saying the Muslim greeting, “assalamu alaikum,” — which means “peace be upon you” — without risk of punishment. Having studied abroad or maintaining contact with relatives outside of Xinjiang can get one sent to a camp. Phones are frequently scanned to detect any searches related to Islam or contact with flagged individuals.
“It’s an extrajudicial process,” Byler said. “No trial, no lawyer. Just a police officer who decides you’re ‘unsafe.’”
Chinese officials denied the existence of the camps, but after satellite images showed the construction of massive structures in Xinjiang, they dismissed them as vocational training schools that Uyghurs voluntarily attend.
“My aunt’s husband has over 70 relatives in the camps,” Anwar said. “His brother was sentenced to 15 years after coming to my cousin’s wedding here. His other brother died of lethal injection in the camps.”
At these camps, Uyghurs are forced to learn the Chinese language, pledge their allegiance to President Xi Jinping, and renounce Islam. People who resist have been forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, which are prohibited in Islam, and have been subjected to physical and psychological torture.
Despite the probable evidence of human rights violations in Xinjiang, the international community has remained overwhelmingly silent. While some Western nations, including the U.S., Germany and France have demanded an end to the persecution, most countries’ economic ties to China have prevented world leaders from speaking out.
“Fear of losing trade agreements, oil exports, and development projects has silenced many countries, especially Muslim majority countries,” Byler said.
Duke University established its own ties with the country after opening a campus in Kunshan, China, in 2013. A university spokesperson declined to comment on the events in Xinjiang.
*****
On the drive to the rally on Nov. 13, Anwar anxiously edited her speech as her father gave her pointers.
“Remember to say the one million in camps is a conservative estimate,” he said. “And speak loudly. Emphasize. Talk about your aunt’s husband.”
Anwar typed and rehearsed as her sister, Ephar, recited a list of chants she was going to lead.
The view of the White House back lawn was blocked by a sea of East Turkistan and American flags waving in the air and Uyghur activists draped in blue. Some protestors were American citizens, others refugees, but almost all of them have family members detained in camps. They marched with hopes that lawmakers would hear their cries for justice.
“I haven’t spoken to my parents for two years. I don’t know if they’re in the
camps, if they’re dead or alive, I don’t know,” said one woman as she broke into tears.
Anwar rushed to meet reporters as her father and sister unrolled a banner reading “Freedom and Independence for Eastern Turkistan” and moved to the front of the gathering.
“Humanity said never again after the genocides we witnessed in the last century,” Anwar said facing the crowd. “Today, we demand the U.S. government to act on those words.”
Signs and flags raised high, the protestors marched from the White House to the U.S. Capitol, shouting “Help us!” and calling on the U.S. to impose sanctions on the Chinese government.
Anwar says she is hopeful and has slowly seen the impact of the movement’s efforts. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., recently called for sanctions against the Chinese government, calling the persecution of Uyghurs “sick.” Well-known Islamic scholar Omar Suleiman was at the rally and has been using his large social media following to raise awareness.
Anwar looks forward to dedicating more of her time toward the cause once she graduates from Duke in May 2019.
“God gave me this privileged life for a reason,” she said. “Islam commands us to fight for justice, and to not do that would be going against my faith.”
Excellent article, thank you for bringing their story to light. Religious persecution of any kind should have no place in the 21st century!
This is so sad.
However what about the many countless Christians suffering and being persecuted in Muslim countries? People like Aydin Anwar live in a Christian country like the US and are free to protest for the Muslims. I like to know which of the many Islamic states would give that freedom?