Uyghurs
The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions by making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people
News • jamila posted the article • 2 comments • 903 views • 2024-07-26 04:41
The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions by making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements.
On an important Muslim holiday last month, police and security officials in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang set up camps to keep an eye on Uyghurs, took Uyghurs to see communist-themed films, and visited Uyghur homes to make sure they weren’t practicing Muslim religious activities.
The moves around the Qurban Eid, also known as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice, which fell on June 17 this year in Xinjiang — one of two official Muslim holidays in China — appeared to be attempts to undermine the observation of the Muslim holy day, outside experts said.
Chinese authorities are trying to weaken Uyghurs’ ethnic and religious identity and forge their loyalty to the Chinese state and the Communist Party, while maintaining security, the experts said.
“It looks like they are trying to Sinicize Eid,” said Erkin Ekrem, a professor at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and vice president of the World Uyghur Congress.
“The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions [by] making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements,” he added.
RELATED STORIES
China pushes ‘Sinicization of Islam’ in Xinjiang as Ramadan arrives
Most Uyghurs banned from praying on Islamic holiday, even in their homes
Chinese use Muslim holiday for propaganda purposes, celebrating with Uyghurs
A screen displays Chinese President Xi Jinping near a mosque in Kashgar, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, June 4, 2019. (AFPTV)
Before 2017, when the Chinese government started cracking down on religious activities in the predominantly Muslim region, men would observe the holiday by visiting mosques for special prayers, cooking meals, spending time with relatives and welcoming guests to their homes.
Since then, authorities have also forbidden Islamic dress for women, beards for men, and Muslim names for children. They have also prevented Uyghurs from fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and encouraged the consumption of pork and alcohol, which Islam forbids.
Chinese national consciousness
On the eve of Eid, Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, visited communities in Urumqi, the region’s capital, and asked residents to strengthen Chinese national consciousness and insist on the Sinicization of Islam.
Public security officers celebrated the holiday with Uyghurs and other ethnicities in Xinjiang and promoted “the common consciousness of the Chinese nation,” the Xinjiang Daily reported on June 19.
The Keriye County Public Security Bureau in Hotan invited teachers at area primary schools, students and parents on June 16 to participate in social activities at a police camp to “build strong Chinese national consciousness and celebrate Eid,” the report said.
On the same day, police in Qitai county in the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture invited Uyghur “relatives” with whom they had been paired up under a previous monitoring program to visit a museum to watch communist-themed films.
On June 17, members of the Public Security Bureau in the prefecture’s Manas county visited Uyghur homes and danced with residents, who had no choice but to join in, the news report said.
“The police showed their concern for the public by their actions and also planted the seeds of national unity deep in everyone’s hearts,” it said.
Assimilation policies
Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said public security agents interfere in Muslim holidays like Eid al-Adha to push assimilationist policies in Xinjiang.
Uyghur identification with Turkic culture along with a belief in Islam and related social and political values are considered a threat because they are outside the control of the Chinese state, he told Radio Free Asia.
Attendees watch video of a Muslim praying during a government reception held for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Beijing, China, May 13, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
“China’s policies are intended to weaken those kinds of affinities outside which are beyond the borders of China and to ensure Uyghurs allegiances are pinned to the Chinese state and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party,” Szadziewski said.
But the Chinese government separates Islam in China from Islam in the rest of the world, Erkin Ekrem of the World Uyghur Congress said.
“In China, the Sinicization of Islam is being carried out vigorously,” he told RFA. “They are trying to create a nation away from Islamic beliefs and customs.”
“Deemphasizing the religion adding in this secular Chinese national consciousness [is] meant to delink Eid al-Adha from its religious origin,” he said. “That is one of the aims here.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster. view all
On an important Muslim holiday last month, police and security officials in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang set up camps to keep an eye on Uyghurs, took Uyghurs to see communist-themed films, and visited Uyghur homes to make sure they weren’t practicing Muslim religious activities.
The moves around the Qurban Eid, also known as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice, which fell on June 17 this year in Xinjiang — one of two official Muslim holidays in China — appeared to be attempts to undermine the observation of the Muslim holy day, outside experts said.
Chinese authorities are trying to weaken Uyghurs’ ethnic and religious identity and forge their loyalty to the Chinese state and the Communist Party, while maintaining security, the experts said.
“It looks like they are trying to Sinicize Eid,” said Erkin Ekrem, a professor at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and vice president of the World Uyghur Congress.
“The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions [by] making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements,” he added.
RELATED STORIES
China pushes ‘Sinicization of Islam’ in Xinjiang as Ramadan arrives
Most Uyghurs banned from praying on Islamic holiday, even in their homes
Chinese use Muslim holiday for propaganda purposes, celebrating with Uyghurs
A screen displays Chinese President Xi Jinping near a mosque in Kashgar, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, June 4, 2019. (AFPTV)
Before 2017, when the Chinese government started cracking down on religious activities in the predominantly Muslim region, men would observe the holiday by visiting mosques for special prayers, cooking meals, spending time with relatives and welcoming guests to their homes.
Since then, authorities have also forbidden Islamic dress for women, beards for men, and Muslim names for children. They have also prevented Uyghurs from fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and encouraged the consumption of pork and alcohol, which Islam forbids.
Chinese national consciousness
On the eve of Eid, Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, visited communities in Urumqi, the region’s capital, and asked residents to strengthen Chinese national consciousness and insist on the Sinicization of Islam.
Public security officers celebrated the holiday with Uyghurs and other ethnicities in Xinjiang and promoted “the common consciousness of the Chinese nation,” the Xinjiang Daily reported on June 19.
The Keriye County Public Security Bureau in Hotan invited teachers at area primary schools, students and parents on June 16 to participate in social activities at a police camp to “build strong Chinese national consciousness and celebrate Eid,” the report said.
On the same day, police in Qitai county in the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture invited Uyghur “relatives” with whom they had been paired up under a previous monitoring program to visit a museum to watch communist-themed films.
On June 17, members of the Public Security Bureau in the prefecture’s Manas county visited Uyghur homes and danced with residents, who had no choice but to join in, the news report said.
“The police showed their concern for the public by their actions and also planted the seeds of national unity deep in everyone’s hearts,” it said.
Assimilation policies
Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said public security agents interfere in Muslim holidays like Eid al-Adha to push assimilationist policies in Xinjiang.
Uyghur identification with Turkic culture along with a belief in Islam and related social and political values are considered a threat because they are outside the control of the Chinese state, he told Radio Free Asia.
Attendees watch video of a Muslim praying during a government reception held for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Beijing, China, May 13, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
“China’s policies are intended to weaken those kinds of affinities outside which are beyond the borders of China and to ensure Uyghurs allegiances are pinned to the Chinese state and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party,” Szadziewski said.
But the Chinese government separates Islam in China from Islam in the rest of the world, Erkin Ekrem of the World Uyghur Congress said.
“In China, the Sinicization of Islam is being carried out vigorously,” he told RFA. “They are trying to create a nation away from Islamic beliefs and customs.”
“Deemphasizing the religion adding in this secular Chinese national consciousness [is] meant to delink Eid al-Adha from its religious origin,” he said. “That is one of the aims here.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster. view all
The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions by making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements.
On an important Muslim holiday last month, police and security officials in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang set up camps to keep an eye on Uyghurs, took Uyghurs to see communist-themed films, and visited Uyghur homes to make sure they weren’t practicing Muslim religious activities.
The moves around the Qurban Eid, also known as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice, which fell on June 17 this year in Xinjiang — one of two official Muslim holidays in China — appeared to be attempts to undermine the observation of the Muslim holy day, outside experts said.
Chinese authorities are trying to weaken Uyghurs’ ethnic and religious identity and forge their loyalty to the Chinese state and the Communist Party, while maintaining security, the experts said.
“It looks like they are trying to Sinicize Eid,” said Erkin Ekrem, a professor at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and vice president of the World Uyghur Congress.
“The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions [by] making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements,” he added.
RELATED STORIES
China pushes ‘Sinicization of Islam’ in Xinjiang as Ramadan arrives
Most Uyghurs banned from praying on Islamic holiday, even in their homes
Chinese use Muslim holiday for propaganda purposes, celebrating with Uyghurs
A screen displays Chinese President Xi Jinping near a mosque in Kashgar, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, June 4, 2019. (AFPTV)
Before 2017, when the Chinese government started cracking down on religious activities in the predominantly Muslim region, men would observe the holiday by visiting mosques for special prayers, cooking meals, spending time with relatives and welcoming guests to their homes.
Since then, authorities have also forbidden Islamic dress for women, beards for men, and Muslim names for children. They have also prevented Uyghurs from fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and encouraged the consumption of pork and alcohol, which Islam forbids.
Chinese national consciousness
On the eve of Eid, Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, visited communities in Urumqi, the region’s capital, and asked residents to strengthen Chinese national consciousness and insist on the Sinicization of Islam.
Public security officers celebrated the holiday with Uyghurs and other ethnicities in Xinjiang and promoted “the common consciousness of the Chinese nation,” the Xinjiang Daily reported on June 19.
The Keriye County Public Security Bureau in Hotan invited teachers at area primary schools, students and parents on June 16 to participate in social activities at a police camp to “build strong Chinese national consciousness and celebrate Eid,” the report said.
On the same day, police in Qitai county in the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture invited Uyghur “relatives” with whom they had been paired up under a previous monitoring program to visit a museum to watch communist-themed films.
On June 17, members of the Public Security Bureau in the prefecture’s Manas county visited Uyghur homes and danced with residents, who had no choice but to join in, the news report said.
“The police showed their concern for the public by their actions and also planted the seeds of national unity deep in everyone’s hearts,” it said.
Assimilation policies
Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said public security agents interfere in Muslim holidays like Eid al-Adha to push assimilationist policies in Xinjiang.
Uyghur identification with Turkic culture along with a belief in Islam and related social and political values are considered a threat because they are outside the control of the Chinese state, he told Radio Free Asia.
Attendees watch video of a Muslim praying during a government reception held for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Beijing, China, May 13, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
“China’s policies are intended to weaken those kinds of affinities outside which are beyond the borders of China and to ensure Uyghurs allegiances are pinned to the Chinese state and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party,” Szadziewski said.
But the Chinese government separates Islam in China from Islam in the rest of the world, Erkin Ekrem of the World Uyghur Congress said.
“In China, the Sinicization of Islam is being carried out vigorously,” he told RFA. “They are trying to create a nation away from Islamic beliefs and customs.”
“Deemphasizing the religion adding in this secular Chinese national consciousness [is] meant to delink Eid al-Adha from its religious origin,” he said. “That is one of the aims here.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
On an important Muslim holiday last month, police and security officials in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang set up camps to keep an eye on Uyghurs, took Uyghurs to see communist-themed films, and visited Uyghur homes to make sure they weren’t practicing Muslim religious activities.
The moves around the Qurban Eid, also known as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice, which fell on June 17 this year in Xinjiang — one of two official Muslim holidays in China — appeared to be attempts to undermine the observation of the Muslim holy day, outside experts said.
Chinese authorities are trying to weaken Uyghurs’ ethnic and religious identity and forge their loyalty to the Chinese state and the Communist Party, while maintaining security, the experts said.
“It looks like they are trying to Sinicize Eid,” said Erkin Ekrem, a professor at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and vice president of the World Uyghur Congress.
“The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions [by] making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements,” he added.
RELATED STORIES
China pushes ‘Sinicization of Islam’ in Xinjiang as Ramadan arrives
Most Uyghurs banned from praying on Islamic holiday, even in their homes
Chinese use Muslim holiday for propaganda purposes, celebrating with Uyghurs
A screen displays Chinese President Xi Jinping near a mosque in Kashgar, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, June 4, 2019. (AFPTV)
Before 2017, when the Chinese government started cracking down on religious activities in the predominantly Muslim region, men would observe the holiday by visiting mosques for special prayers, cooking meals, spending time with relatives and welcoming guests to their homes.
Since then, authorities have also forbidden Islamic dress for women, beards for men, and Muslim names for children. They have also prevented Uyghurs from fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and encouraged the consumption of pork and alcohol, which Islam forbids.
Chinese national consciousness
On the eve of Eid, Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, visited communities in Urumqi, the region’s capital, and asked residents to strengthen Chinese national consciousness and insist on the Sinicization of Islam.
Public security officers celebrated the holiday with Uyghurs and other ethnicities in Xinjiang and promoted “the common consciousness of the Chinese nation,” the Xinjiang Daily reported on June 19.
The Keriye County Public Security Bureau in Hotan invited teachers at area primary schools, students and parents on June 16 to participate in social activities at a police camp to “build strong Chinese national consciousness and celebrate Eid,” the report said.
On the same day, police in Qitai county in the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture invited Uyghur “relatives” with whom they had been paired up under a previous monitoring program to visit a museum to watch communist-themed films.
On June 17, members of the Public Security Bureau in the prefecture’s Manas county visited Uyghur homes and danced with residents, who had no choice but to join in, the news report said.
“The police showed their concern for the public by their actions and also planted the seeds of national unity deep in everyone’s hearts,” it said.
Assimilation policies
Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said public security agents interfere in Muslim holidays like Eid al-Adha to push assimilationist policies in Xinjiang.
Uyghur identification with Turkic culture along with a belief in Islam and related social and political values are considered a threat because they are outside the control of the Chinese state, he told Radio Free Asia.
Attendees watch video of a Muslim praying during a government reception held for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Beijing, China, May 13, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
“China’s policies are intended to weaken those kinds of affinities outside which are beyond the borders of China and to ensure Uyghurs allegiances are pinned to the Chinese state and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party,” Szadziewski said.
But the Chinese government separates Islam in China from Islam in the rest of the world, Erkin Ekrem of the World Uyghur Congress said.
“In China, the Sinicization of Islam is being carried out vigorously,” he told RFA. “They are trying to create a nation away from Islamic beliefs and customs.”
“Deemphasizing the religion adding in this secular Chinese national consciousness [is] meant to delink Eid al-Adha from its religious origin,” he said. “That is one of the aims here.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
China’s surveilling the phones of Uyghurs
News • karin posted the article • 0 comments • 839 views • 2023-05-05 11:14
China’s surveilling the phones of Uyghurs for “violent” content, like material that promotes self-determination,
Human Rights Watch says. 57% of content flagged was common religious material like Quran readings. China forced 1M+ Uyghur & other Muslims into “re-education” camps, experts say. view all
Human Rights Watch says. 57% of content flagged was common religious material like Quran readings. China forced 1M+ Uyghur & other Muslims into “re-education” camps, experts say. view all
China’s surveilling the phones of Uyghurs for “violent” content, like material that promotes self-determination,
Human Rights Watch says. 57% of content flagged was common religious material like Quran readings. China forced 1M+ Uyghur & other Muslims into “re-education” camps, experts say.
Human Rights Watch says. 57% of content flagged was common religious material like Quran readings. China forced 1M+ Uyghur & other Muslims into “re-education” camps, experts say.
Focusing on Uyghurs | Iliyas: Why do I need to learn Chinese?
Articles • Dmitry posted the article • 0 comments • 1080 views • 2023-03-16 07:50
Many people often ask me, 'Your Chinese is so good, how did you learn it? Do you know Uyghur?' On the internet, there are also people who frequently ask me, 'Since you are so against China, why do you still study and use Chinese? Why not write in Uyghur?' Although I always smile and brush off these questions, especially the latter one keeps coming up. After a while, I feel that maybe I should give an answer.
Today, I will talk about how I chose to learn Chinese and how I learned it. Also, what was my purpose for learning Chinese. This can be considered as a summary of my experience in learning the language and my motivation and goals for doing so.
To be honest, learning Chinese was not my choice but rather my parents' decision. They forced me to learn it!
I have mentioned this briefly in some of my previous articles; originally born in Quruqhay Township in Yili (Xinjiang), where I grew up with my grandparents. Around 1970 when I started third grade at a Uyghur elementary school there suddenly came a time when my parents visited from Hami to see us on vacation. They wanted me to go back with them to Hami city for schooling.
Going to school in the city had great appeal for me as a child growing up in rural areas even though leaving behind grandparents who raised me made it difficult for me emotionally; however curiosity led me follow along with them away from beautiful mountain village Quruqhay Township filled with clear waters and fragrant fruits through several days of horse-drawn carriage rides followed by long-distance bus trips before finally arriving at Hami Railway Area.
Completely unexpected were rows upon rows of pale dilapidated railway flats highlighting poverty-stricken self-built small courtyard walls high or low unevenly distributed throughout area's dusty narrow roads pitted year-round emitting odors every crossroads having at least one or two open-air toilets which made lose interest completely towards cities - accurately speaking - disgust arose within myself.
Furthermore almost no Uyghurs lived around Hami Railway Area where we resided only two or three families were present; since unable speak Mandarin (Chinese) thus confined inside home feeling deceived by parents' actions wrote secretly letter asking grandparents come rescue immediately after approximately one or two months later they appeared unexpectedly taking week-long visit bringing freedom returning back home Quruqhay.
However, the good times didn't last long. My parents came again, bringing with them more new clothes, candies and biscuits as material temptations. They repeatedly urged me to learn Chinese and described a bright future of growing up in the city. They told me that if I learned Chinese, I could work on the railway in the future with high salary and job security. Although I didn't quite understand what high salary and job security meant, under my grandparents' persuasion, I knew that working on the railway was much better than farming in rural areas.
Under my parents' sugar-coated bullets and promises of a better future, I followed them to Hami once again. But this time, I persisted.
In autumn when school started, I entered Hami Railway Elementary School No. 4 not far from my home to begin learning Chinese language from scratch since at that time I did not know any Chinese words.
At first it was very difficult for me; besides arithmetic problems which were easy for me because they are universal across languages ,I couldn't understand anything else teachers said or communicate effectively with classmates except through gestures or body language . However,I persevered knowing that hard work pays off eventually . After several months of hard work ,I began to understand spoken Mandarin ; by second semester ,I had already made it into top ten students in class .
While studying Uyghur script at Quruhay Primary School back then there were no other books available except Mao's quotations but at Hami where we studied Mandarin there were many different kinds of books available . With mastery over Mandarin language ,I read extensively all sorts of books which further piqued my interest towards learning Mandarin; a language opens up a window into another world -Mandarin opened up a new window for me.
The railway, like the military unit where I later worked, was a heavy area of ethnic discrimination. As Uyghurs, whether it was my parents or my siblings and other Uyghurs working on the railway, we faced various forms of discrimination almost every day. This discrimination came from teachers, classmates, neighbors, leaders and colleagues in our parents’ units; these seemingly trivial discriminations had a profound impact on my growth.
The most disgusting and boring discriminatory issue that accompanied me for half of my life was when I first appeared in class with seemingly innocent but obviously provocative questions that made teachers and classmates remember for a long time: Why don’t Uyghurs eat pork? Why do Uyghur names are so long? Why are Uyghurs so barbaric? At first, I patiently explained them but found out they already had their own answers. After I finished explaining to them, they would still come up with insulting fabricated stories to argue.
What’s worse is that some classmates deliberately put food containing pork on my desk or in my backpack and drawers. When I reported this to the teacher, he always casually said it was just children playing jokes on you. Then the teacher also joked about how good pork tasted and asked why didn’t I try it? Helpless as I was left with no choice but to solve it myself - by fighting back; most of the time I won but there were also times when students called their friends over to gang up on me leaving me beaten black and blue.
The more discrimination we encountered made me want to master Chinese better than ever before becoming an outstanding student at school. However, this became another reason for promoting discrimination; every time teachers criticized poor-performing students using frequent statements such as “Look at Yilixiati (my name), an ethnic minority person who performs better than all of you in all subjects; aren’t you ashamed?”
During ten years studying at Hami Railway School ,I witnessed firsthand how difficult life could be for my parents despite earning slightly higher wages compared to other Uighur workers on railways which allowed us a slightly better standard of living . They did the hardest work yet earned lowest wages while facing daily humiliation due to racial prejudice.
I remember one day when mother returned home crying after being insulted by Han people at her workplace selling tickets at small stations along railways . Commuting railway staff can travel free with their commuting certificate while others have to buy tickets . That day she met an extremely vulgar non-commuting worker who not only refused buying ticket but also insulted her verbally . My mother retorted him back then he jumped up wanting hit her physically calling her old ignorant uyghur woman who doesn’t understand anything etc .
Every time something like this happened ,my parents would tell me seriously: “Son,I hope you study hard Chinese language well ,master knowledge well,hopefully one day you can sit down equally with them ; unlike us living our whole lives being bullied.” Seeing all this happening around me,I knew what they expected from me wasn’t just mastering Chinese language skills or getting a job working on railways,but rather achieving equality between Han people &Uighurs!
Although at that time,I didn’t fully understand what equality meant according to parent’s expectations,but through personal experiences&commonly faced prejudices among fellow uighurs around,it dawned upon me that mastering Chinese language&modern knowledge is essential.I naively thought,the various forms of prejudice against uighurs were caused partly because older generation uighur folks couldn’t speak chinese fluently,and partly because ordinary han people working along railways were too ignorant & uncivilized.So if i studied hard,mastered knowledge,i could prove uighur people weren’t inferior compared to han people,&change their views towards us thus achieving equality .
I worked hard,determined not fall behind,became top student in class,&with excellent grades ranked within top ten throughout school,enabling admission into prestigious HaMi No2 High School followed by Dalian Institute Of Technology.
After graduating from university, I returned to my hometown to look for work. My father asked me if I would be willing to work on the railway. He said he could talk to his leader about it and my younger siblings also encouraged me, saying that railway jobs had high salaries and good benefits, and everyone was in Hami. However, I firmly refused and told them about the various discriminations I encountered during my ten years of schooling as well as the dirty, chaotic, and poor environment of the railways which had already made me tired of working there. No, I never wanted to go back to the railway.
However, fate played a joke on me when I was unfortunately assigned to Shihezi after graduation where I became a teacher in China’s colonial pioneer corps - Bingtuan’s capital city.
As a recent college graduate with an arrogant sense of superiority due to being one of the best students at that time who thought they could point out flaws in everything and make sweeping statements with ease; coming here as a teacher in Shihezi gave me this feeling like because my Chinese language skills were fluent coupled with modern knowledge meant that equality should be achievable through ability alone. But what happened instead was that compared with discrimination against non-Han ethnic groups such as Uyghurs by railways (which is already bad enough), Bingtuan’s discrimination against these groups can only be described as equally severe but more insidious and blatant.
During decades spent teaching here while dealing with school leaders and colleagues alike; most Han intellectuals’ prejudice towards Uyghurs or other non-Han ethnicities runs deep rooted within them along with their own brand of ignorant arrogance.
This kind of ignorance makes them feel entitled towards enlightening us or civilizing us; our language culture traditions beliefs are all backward according to them so their mission is assimilating us into “Chinese civilization” making us become just like Han people who speak Mandarin rather than Uyghur speakers!
I remember after countless heated debates between myself & Han colleagues over time; one old teacher named Wang said: “Mr Yiliyasiti! In the past we used say ‘Heaven fears not nor does Earth fear anything except for an old Uyghur speaking Mandarin’. Today however? We know you guys learn Chinese just so you can deal with us.” This statement has been repeated many times since then sometimes vented out angrily sometimes sighed helplessly but sometimes even cursed at full throttle fueled by hatred!
With hopes held high wanting mastery over Mandarin learning knowledge realizing dreams for equal footing alongside Han people- 10 years studying hard behind closed doors mastering Chinese yet ultimately discovering how uncomfortable angry & indignant it made both my Han superiors & colleagues feel even going so far as thinking any dissenting opinions or resistance from myself constituted rebellion deserving punishment!
Nevertheless despite all this hardship endured throughout East Turkestan fluency in Mandarin did not change my status nor fulfill wishes for equality among Han people yet through learning Mandarin gained much knowledge understanding deeper historical context regarding imperial China grasping vastness profundity contained within its culture meeting genuine friends among enlightened open-minded individuals who truly understand freedom & equality concepts! Most importantly though- mastering Mandarin became most powerful tool enabling pursuit toward equal rights freedom standing toe-to-toe versus those advocating unity under imperialist rule actually achieving true parity long ago! view all
Today, I will talk about how I chose to learn Chinese and how I learned it. Also, what was my purpose for learning Chinese. This can be considered as a summary of my experience in learning the language and my motivation and goals for doing so.
To be honest, learning Chinese was not my choice but rather my parents' decision. They forced me to learn it!
I have mentioned this briefly in some of my previous articles; originally born in Quruqhay Township in Yili (Xinjiang), where I grew up with my grandparents. Around 1970 when I started third grade at a Uyghur elementary school there suddenly came a time when my parents visited from Hami to see us on vacation. They wanted me to go back with them to Hami city for schooling.
Going to school in the city had great appeal for me as a child growing up in rural areas even though leaving behind grandparents who raised me made it difficult for me emotionally; however curiosity led me follow along with them away from beautiful mountain village Quruqhay Township filled with clear waters and fragrant fruits through several days of horse-drawn carriage rides followed by long-distance bus trips before finally arriving at Hami Railway Area.
Completely unexpected were rows upon rows of pale dilapidated railway flats highlighting poverty-stricken self-built small courtyard walls high or low unevenly distributed throughout area's dusty narrow roads pitted year-round emitting odors every crossroads having at least one or two open-air toilets which made lose interest completely towards cities - accurately speaking - disgust arose within myself.
Furthermore almost no Uyghurs lived around Hami Railway Area where we resided only two or three families were present; since unable speak Mandarin (Chinese) thus confined inside home feeling deceived by parents' actions wrote secretly letter asking grandparents come rescue immediately after approximately one or two months later they appeared unexpectedly taking week-long visit bringing freedom returning back home Quruqhay.
However, the good times didn't last long. My parents came again, bringing with them more new clothes, candies and biscuits as material temptations. They repeatedly urged me to learn Chinese and described a bright future of growing up in the city. They told me that if I learned Chinese, I could work on the railway in the future with high salary and job security. Although I didn't quite understand what high salary and job security meant, under my grandparents' persuasion, I knew that working on the railway was much better than farming in rural areas.
Under my parents' sugar-coated bullets and promises of a better future, I followed them to Hami once again. But this time, I persisted.
In autumn when school started, I entered Hami Railway Elementary School No. 4 not far from my home to begin learning Chinese language from scratch since at that time I did not know any Chinese words.
At first it was very difficult for me; besides arithmetic problems which were easy for me because they are universal across languages ,I couldn't understand anything else teachers said or communicate effectively with classmates except through gestures or body language . However,I persevered knowing that hard work pays off eventually . After several months of hard work ,I began to understand spoken Mandarin ; by second semester ,I had already made it into top ten students in class .
While studying Uyghur script at Quruhay Primary School back then there were no other books available except Mao's quotations but at Hami where we studied Mandarin there were many different kinds of books available . With mastery over Mandarin language ,I read extensively all sorts of books which further piqued my interest towards learning Mandarin; a language opens up a window into another world -Mandarin opened up a new window for me.
The railway, like the military unit where I later worked, was a heavy area of ethnic discrimination. As Uyghurs, whether it was my parents or my siblings and other Uyghurs working on the railway, we faced various forms of discrimination almost every day. This discrimination came from teachers, classmates, neighbors, leaders and colleagues in our parents’ units; these seemingly trivial discriminations had a profound impact on my growth.
The most disgusting and boring discriminatory issue that accompanied me for half of my life was when I first appeared in class with seemingly innocent but obviously provocative questions that made teachers and classmates remember for a long time: Why don’t Uyghurs eat pork? Why do Uyghur names are so long? Why are Uyghurs so barbaric? At first, I patiently explained them but found out they already had their own answers. After I finished explaining to them, they would still come up with insulting fabricated stories to argue.
What’s worse is that some classmates deliberately put food containing pork on my desk or in my backpack and drawers. When I reported this to the teacher, he always casually said it was just children playing jokes on you. Then the teacher also joked about how good pork tasted and asked why didn’t I try it? Helpless as I was left with no choice but to solve it myself - by fighting back; most of the time I won but there were also times when students called their friends over to gang up on me leaving me beaten black and blue.
The more discrimination we encountered made me want to master Chinese better than ever before becoming an outstanding student at school. However, this became another reason for promoting discrimination; every time teachers criticized poor-performing students using frequent statements such as “Look at Yilixiati (my name), an ethnic minority person who performs better than all of you in all subjects; aren’t you ashamed?”
During ten years studying at Hami Railway School ,I witnessed firsthand how difficult life could be for my parents despite earning slightly higher wages compared to other Uighur workers on railways which allowed us a slightly better standard of living . They did the hardest work yet earned lowest wages while facing daily humiliation due to racial prejudice.
I remember one day when mother returned home crying after being insulted by Han people at her workplace selling tickets at small stations along railways . Commuting railway staff can travel free with their commuting certificate while others have to buy tickets . That day she met an extremely vulgar non-commuting worker who not only refused buying ticket but also insulted her verbally . My mother retorted him back then he jumped up wanting hit her physically calling her old ignorant uyghur woman who doesn’t understand anything etc .
Every time something like this happened ,my parents would tell me seriously: “Son,I hope you study hard Chinese language well ,master knowledge well,hopefully one day you can sit down equally with them ; unlike us living our whole lives being bullied.” Seeing all this happening around me,I knew what they expected from me wasn’t just mastering Chinese language skills or getting a job working on railways,but rather achieving equality between Han people &Uighurs!
Although at that time,I didn’t fully understand what equality meant according to parent’s expectations,but through personal experiences&commonly faced prejudices among fellow uighurs around,it dawned upon me that mastering Chinese language&modern knowledge is essential.I naively thought,the various forms of prejudice against uighurs were caused partly because older generation uighur folks couldn’t speak chinese fluently,and partly because ordinary han people working along railways were too ignorant & uncivilized.So if i studied hard,mastered knowledge,i could prove uighur people weren’t inferior compared to han people,&change their views towards us thus achieving equality .
I worked hard,determined not fall behind,became top student in class,&with excellent grades ranked within top ten throughout school,enabling admission into prestigious HaMi No2 High School followed by Dalian Institute Of Technology.
After graduating from university, I returned to my hometown to look for work. My father asked me if I would be willing to work on the railway. He said he could talk to his leader about it and my younger siblings also encouraged me, saying that railway jobs had high salaries and good benefits, and everyone was in Hami. However, I firmly refused and told them about the various discriminations I encountered during my ten years of schooling as well as the dirty, chaotic, and poor environment of the railways which had already made me tired of working there. No, I never wanted to go back to the railway.
However, fate played a joke on me when I was unfortunately assigned to Shihezi after graduation where I became a teacher in China’s colonial pioneer corps - Bingtuan’s capital city.
As a recent college graduate with an arrogant sense of superiority due to being one of the best students at that time who thought they could point out flaws in everything and make sweeping statements with ease; coming here as a teacher in Shihezi gave me this feeling like because my Chinese language skills were fluent coupled with modern knowledge meant that equality should be achievable through ability alone. But what happened instead was that compared with discrimination against non-Han ethnic groups such as Uyghurs by railways (which is already bad enough), Bingtuan’s discrimination against these groups can only be described as equally severe but more insidious and blatant.
During decades spent teaching here while dealing with school leaders and colleagues alike; most Han intellectuals’ prejudice towards Uyghurs or other non-Han ethnicities runs deep rooted within them along with their own brand of ignorant arrogance.
This kind of ignorance makes them feel entitled towards enlightening us or civilizing us; our language culture traditions beliefs are all backward according to them so their mission is assimilating us into “Chinese civilization” making us become just like Han people who speak Mandarin rather than Uyghur speakers!
I remember after countless heated debates between myself & Han colleagues over time; one old teacher named Wang said: “Mr Yiliyasiti! In the past we used say ‘Heaven fears not nor does Earth fear anything except for an old Uyghur speaking Mandarin’. Today however? We know you guys learn Chinese just so you can deal with us.” This statement has been repeated many times since then sometimes vented out angrily sometimes sighed helplessly but sometimes even cursed at full throttle fueled by hatred!
With hopes held high wanting mastery over Mandarin learning knowledge realizing dreams for equal footing alongside Han people- 10 years studying hard behind closed doors mastering Chinese yet ultimately discovering how uncomfortable angry & indignant it made both my Han superiors & colleagues feel even going so far as thinking any dissenting opinions or resistance from myself constituted rebellion deserving punishment!
Nevertheless despite all this hardship endured throughout East Turkestan fluency in Mandarin did not change my status nor fulfill wishes for equality among Han people yet through learning Mandarin gained much knowledge understanding deeper historical context regarding imperial China grasping vastness profundity contained within its culture meeting genuine friends among enlightened open-minded individuals who truly understand freedom & equality concepts! Most importantly though- mastering Mandarin became most powerful tool enabling pursuit toward equal rights freedom standing toe-to-toe versus those advocating unity under imperialist rule actually achieving true parity long ago! view all
Many people often ask me, 'Your Chinese is so good, how did you learn it? Do you know Uyghur?' On the internet, there are also people who frequently ask me, 'Since you are so against China, why do you still study and use Chinese? Why not write in Uyghur?' Although I always smile and brush off these questions, especially the latter one keeps coming up. After a while, I feel that maybe I should give an answer.
Today, I will talk about how I chose to learn Chinese and how I learned it. Also, what was my purpose for learning Chinese. This can be considered as a summary of my experience in learning the language and my motivation and goals for doing so.
To be honest, learning Chinese was not my choice but rather my parents' decision. They forced me to learn it!
I have mentioned this briefly in some of my previous articles; originally born in Quruqhay Township in Yili (Xinjiang), where I grew up with my grandparents. Around 1970 when I started third grade at a Uyghur elementary school there suddenly came a time when my parents visited from Hami to see us on vacation. They wanted me to go back with them to Hami city for schooling.
Going to school in the city had great appeal for me as a child growing up in rural areas even though leaving behind grandparents who raised me made it difficult for me emotionally; however curiosity led me follow along with them away from beautiful mountain village Quruqhay Township filled with clear waters and fragrant fruits through several days of horse-drawn carriage rides followed by long-distance bus trips before finally arriving at Hami Railway Area.
Completely unexpected were rows upon rows of pale dilapidated railway flats highlighting poverty-stricken self-built small courtyard walls high or low unevenly distributed throughout area's dusty narrow roads pitted year-round emitting odors every crossroads having at least one or two open-air toilets which made lose interest completely towards cities - accurately speaking - disgust arose within myself.
Furthermore almost no Uyghurs lived around Hami Railway Area where we resided only two or three families were present; since unable speak Mandarin (Chinese) thus confined inside home feeling deceived by parents' actions wrote secretly letter asking grandparents come rescue immediately after approximately one or two months later they appeared unexpectedly taking week-long visit bringing freedom returning back home Quruqhay.
However, the good times didn't last long. My parents came again, bringing with them more new clothes, candies and biscuits as material temptations. They repeatedly urged me to learn Chinese and described a bright future of growing up in the city. They told me that if I learned Chinese, I could work on the railway in the future with high salary and job security. Although I didn't quite understand what high salary and job security meant, under my grandparents' persuasion, I knew that working on the railway was much better than farming in rural areas.
Under my parents' sugar-coated bullets and promises of a better future, I followed them to Hami once again. But this time, I persisted.
In autumn when school started, I entered Hami Railway Elementary School No. 4 not far from my home to begin learning Chinese language from scratch since at that time I did not know any Chinese words.
At first it was very difficult for me; besides arithmetic problems which were easy for me because they are universal across languages ,I couldn't understand anything else teachers said or communicate effectively with classmates except through gestures or body language . However,I persevered knowing that hard work pays off eventually . After several months of hard work ,I began to understand spoken Mandarin ; by second semester ,I had already made it into top ten students in class .
While studying Uyghur script at Quruhay Primary School back then there were no other books available except Mao's quotations but at Hami where we studied Mandarin there were many different kinds of books available . With mastery over Mandarin language ,I read extensively all sorts of books which further piqued my interest towards learning Mandarin; a language opens up a window into another world -Mandarin opened up a new window for me.
The railway, like the military unit where I later worked, was a heavy area of ethnic discrimination. As Uyghurs, whether it was my parents or my siblings and other Uyghurs working on the railway, we faced various forms of discrimination almost every day. This discrimination came from teachers, classmates, neighbors, leaders and colleagues in our parents’ units; these seemingly trivial discriminations had a profound impact on my growth.
The most disgusting and boring discriminatory issue that accompanied me for half of my life was when I first appeared in class with seemingly innocent but obviously provocative questions that made teachers and classmates remember for a long time: Why don’t Uyghurs eat pork? Why do Uyghur names are so long? Why are Uyghurs so barbaric? At first, I patiently explained them but found out they already had their own answers. After I finished explaining to them, they would still come up with insulting fabricated stories to argue.
What’s worse is that some classmates deliberately put food containing pork on my desk or in my backpack and drawers. When I reported this to the teacher, he always casually said it was just children playing jokes on you. Then the teacher also joked about how good pork tasted and asked why didn’t I try it? Helpless as I was left with no choice but to solve it myself - by fighting back; most of the time I won but there were also times when students called their friends over to gang up on me leaving me beaten black and blue.
The more discrimination we encountered made me want to master Chinese better than ever before becoming an outstanding student at school. However, this became another reason for promoting discrimination; every time teachers criticized poor-performing students using frequent statements such as “Look at Yilixiati (my name), an ethnic minority person who performs better than all of you in all subjects; aren’t you ashamed?”
During ten years studying at Hami Railway School ,I witnessed firsthand how difficult life could be for my parents despite earning slightly higher wages compared to other Uighur workers on railways which allowed us a slightly better standard of living . They did the hardest work yet earned lowest wages while facing daily humiliation due to racial prejudice.
I remember one day when mother returned home crying after being insulted by Han people at her workplace selling tickets at small stations along railways . Commuting railway staff can travel free with their commuting certificate while others have to buy tickets . That day she met an extremely vulgar non-commuting worker who not only refused buying ticket but also insulted her verbally . My mother retorted him back then he jumped up wanting hit her physically calling her old ignorant uyghur woman who doesn’t understand anything etc .
Every time something like this happened ,my parents would tell me seriously: “Son,I hope you study hard Chinese language well ,master knowledge well,hopefully one day you can sit down equally with them ; unlike us living our whole lives being bullied.” Seeing all this happening around me,I knew what they expected from me wasn’t just mastering Chinese language skills or getting a job working on railways,but rather achieving equality between Han people &Uighurs!
Although at that time,I didn’t fully understand what equality meant according to parent’s expectations,but through personal experiences&commonly faced prejudices among fellow uighurs around,it dawned upon me that mastering Chinese language&modern knowledge is essential.I naively thought,the various forms of prejudice against uighurs were caused partly because older generation uighur folks couldn’t speak chinese fluently,and partly because ordinary han people working along railways were too ignorant & uncivilized.So if i studied hard,mastered knowledge,i could prove uighur people weren’t inferior compared to han people,&change their views towards us thus achieving equality .
I worked hard,determined not fall behind,became top student in class,&with excellent grades ranked within top ten throughout school,enabling admission into prestigious HaMi No2 High School followed by Dalian Institute Of Technology.
After graduating from university, I returned to my hometown to look for work. My father asked me if I would be willing to work on the railway. He said he could talk to his leader about it and my younger siblings also encouraged me, saying that railway jobs had high salaries and good benefits, and everyone was in Hami. However, I firmly refused and told them about the various discriminations I encountered during my ten years of schooling as well as the dirty, chaotic, and poor environment of the railways which had already made me tired of working there. No, I never wanted to go back to the railway.
However, fate played a joke on me when I was unfortunately assigned to Shihezi after graduation where I became a teacher in China’s colonial pioneer corps - Bingtuan’s capital city.
As a recent college graduate with an arrogant sense of superiority due to being one of the best students at that time who thought they could point out flaws in everything and make sweeping statements with ease; coming here as a teacher in Shihezi gave me this feeling like because my Chinese language skills were fluent coupled with modern knowledge meant that equality should be achievable through ability alone. But what happened instead was that compared with discrimination against non-Han ethnic groups such as Uyghurs by railways (which is already bad enough), Bingtuan’s discrimination against these groups can only be described as equally severe but more insidious and blatant.
During decades spent teaching here while dealing with school leaders and colleagues alike; most Han intellectuals’ prejudice towards Uyghurs or other non-Han ethnicities runs deep rooted within them along with their own brand of ignorant arrogance.
This kind of ignorance makes them feel entitled towards enlightening us or civilizing us; our language culture traditions beliefs are all backward according to them so their mission is assimilating us into “Chinese civilization” making us become just like Han people who speak Mandarin rather than Uyghur speakers!
I remember after countless heated debates between myself & Han colleagues over time; one old teacher named Wang said: “Mr Yiliyasiti! In the past we used say ‘Heaven fears not nor does Earth fear anything except for an old Uyghur speaking Mandarin’. Today however? We know you guys learn Chinese just so you can deal with us.” This statement has been repeated many times since then sometimes vented out angrily sometimes sighed helplessly but sometimes even cursed at full throttle fueled by hatred!
With hopes held high wanting mastery over Mandarin learning knowledge realizing dreams for equal footing alongside Han people- 10 years studying hard behind closed doors mastering Chinese yet ultimately discovering how uncomfortable angry & indignant it made both my Han superiors & colleagues feel even going so far as thinking any dissenting opinions or resistance from myself constituted rebellion deserving punishment!
Nevertheless despite all this hardship endured throughout East Turkestan fluency in Mandarin did not change my status nor fulfill wishes for equality among Han people yet through learning Mandarin gained much knowledge understanding deeper historical context regarding imperial China grasping vastness profundity contained within its culture meeting genuine friends among enlightened open-minded individuals who truly understand freedom & equality concepts! Most importantly though- mastering Mandarin became most powerful tool enabling pursuit toward equal rights freedom standing toe-to-toe versus those advocating unity under imperialist rule actually achieving true parity long ago!
Today, I will talk about how I chose to learn Chinese and how I learned it. Also, what was my purpose for learning Chinese. This can be considered as a summary of my experience in learning the language and my motivation and goals for doing so.
To be honest, learning Chinese was not my choice but rather my parents' decision. They forced me to learn it!
I have mentioned this briefly in some of my previous articles; originally born in Quruqhay Township in Yili (Xinjiang), where I grew up with my grandparents. Around 1970 when I started third grade at a Uyghur elementary school there suddenly came a time when my parents visited from Hami to see us on vacation. They wanted me to go back with them to Hami city for schooling.
Going to school in the city had great appeal for me as a child growing up in rural areas even though leaving behind grandparents who raised me made it difficult for me emotionally; however curiosity led me follow along with them away from beautiful mountain village Quruqhay Township filled with clear waters and fragrant fruits through several days of horse-drawn carriage rides followed by long-distance bus trips before finally arriving at Hami Railway Area.
Completely unexpected were rows upon rows of pale dilapidated railway flats highlighting poverty-stricken self-built small courtyard walls high or low unevenly distributed throughout area's dusty narrow roads pitted year-round emitting odors every crossroads having at least one or two open-air toilets which made lose interest completely towards cities - accurately speaking - disgust arose within myself.
Furthermore almost no Uyghurs lived around Hami Railway Area where we resided only two or three families were present; since unable speak Mandarin (Chinese) thus confined inside home feeling deceived by parents' actions wrote secretly letter asking grandparents come rescue immediately after approximately one or two months later they appeared unexpectedly taking week-long visit bringing freedom returning back home Quruqhay.
However, the good times didn't last long. My parents came again, bringing with them more new clothes, candies and biscuits as material temptations. They repeatedly urged me to learn Chinese and described a bright future of growing up in the city. They told me that if I learned Chinese, I could work on the railway in the future with high salary and job security. Although I didn't quite understand what high salary and job security meant, under my grandparents' persuasion, I knew that working on the railway was much better than farming in rural areas.
Under my parents' sugar-coated bullets and promises of a better future, I followed them to Hami once again. But this time, I persisted.
In autumn when school started, I entered Hami Railway Elementary School No. 4 not far from my home to begin learning Chinese language from scratch since at that time I did not know any Chinese words.
At first it was very difficult for me; besides arithmetic problems which were easy for me because they are universal across languages ,I couldn't understand anything else teachers said or communicate effectively with classmates except through gestures or body language . However,I persevered knowing that hard work pays off eventually . After several months of hard work ,I began to understand spoken Mandarin ; by second semester ,I had already made it into top ten students in class .
While studying Uyghur script at Quruhay Primary School back then there were no other books available except Mao's quotations but at Hami where we studied Mandarin there were many different kinds of books available . With mastery over Mandarin language ,I read extensively all sorts of books which further piqued my interest towards learning Mandarin; a language opens up a window into another world -Mandarin opened up a new window for me.
The railway, like the military unit where I later worked, was a heavy area of ethnic discrimination. As Uyghurs, whether it was my parents or my siblings and other Uyghurs working on the railway, we faced various forms of discrimination almost every day. This discrimination came from teachers, classmates, neighbors, leaders and colleagues in our parents’ units; these seemingly trivial discriminations had a profound impact on my growth.
The most disgusting and boring discriminatory issue that accompanied me for half of my life was when I first appeared in class with seemingly innocent but obviously provocative questions that made teachers and classmates remember for a long time: Why don’t Uyghurs eat pork? Why do Uyghur names are so long? Why are Uyghurs so barbaric? At first, I patiently explained them but found out they already had their own answers. After I finished explaining to them, they would still come up with insulting fabricated stories to argue.
What’s worse is that some classmates deliberately put food containing pork on my desk or in my backpack and drawers. When I reported this to the teacher, he always casually said it was just children playing jokes on you. Then the teacher also joked about how good pork tasted and asked why didn’t I try it? Helpless as I was left with no choice but to solve it myself - by fighting back; most of the time I won but there were also times when students called their friends over to gang up on me leaving me beaten black and blue.
The more discrimination we encountered made me want to master Chinese better than ever before becoming an outstanding student at school. However, this became another reason for promoting discrimination; every time teachers criticized poor-performing students using frequent statements such as “Look at Yilixiati (my name), an ethnic minority person who performs better than all of you in all subjects; aren’t you ashamed?”
During ten years studying at Hami Railway School ,I witnessed firsthand how difficult life could be for my parents despite earning slightly higher wages compared to other Uighur workers on railways which allowed us a slightly better standard of living . They did the hardest work yet earned lowest wages while facing daily humiliation due to racial prejudice.
I remember one day when mother returned home crying after being insulted by Han people at her workplace selling tickets at small stations along railways . Commuting railway staff can travel free with their commuting certificate while others have to buy tickets . That day she met an extremely vulgar non-commuting worker who not only refused buying ticket but also insulted her verbally . My mother retorted him back then he jumped up wanting hit her physically calling her old ignorant uyghur woman who doesn’t understand anything etc .
Every time something like this happened ,my parents would tell me seriously: “Son,I hope you study hard Chinese language well ,master knowledge well,hopefully one day you can sit down equally with them ; unlike us living our whole lives being bullied.” Seeing all this happening around me,I knew what they expected from me wasn’t just mastering Chinese language skills or getting a job working on railways,but rather achieving equality between Han people &Uighurs!
Although at that time,I didn’t fully understand what equality meant according to parent’s expectations,but through personal experiences&commonly faced prejudices among fellow uighurs around,it dawned upon me that mastering Chinese language&modern knowledge is essential.I naively thought,the various forms of prejudice against uighurs were caused partly because older generation uighur folks couldn’t speak chinese fluently,and partly because ordinary han people working along railways were too ignorant & uncivilized.So if i studied hard,mastered knowledge,i could prove uighur people weren’t inferior compared to han people,&change their views towards us thus achieving equality .
I worked hard,determined not fall behind,became top student in class,&with excellent grades ranked within top ten throughout school,enabling admission into prestigious HaMi No2 High School followed by Dalian Institute Of Technology.
After graduating from university, I returned to my hometown to look for work. My father asked me if I would be willing to work on the railway. He said he could talk to his leader about it and my younger siblings also encouraged me, saying that railway jobs had high salaries and good benefits, and everyone was in Hami. However, I firmly refused and told them about the various discriminations I encountered during my ten years of schooling as well as the dirty, chaotic, and poor environment of the railways which had already made me tired of working there. No, I never wanted to go back to the railway.
However, fate played a joke on me when I was unfortunately assigned to Shihezi after graduation where I became a teacher in China’s colonial pioneer corps - Bingtuan’s capital city.
As a recent college graduate with an arrogant sense of superiority due to being one of the best students at that time who thought they could point out flaws in everything and make sweeping statements with ease; coming here as a teacher in Shihezi gave me this feeling like because my Chinese language skills were fluent coupled with modern knowledge meant that equality should be achievable through ability alone. But what happened instead was that compared with discrimination against non-Han ethnic groups such as Uyghurs by railways (which is already bad enough), Bingtuan’s discrimination against these groups can only be described as equally severe but more insidious and blatant.
During decades spent teaching here while dealing with school leaders and colleagues alike; most Han intellectuals’ prejudice towards Uyghurs or other non-Han ethnicities runs deep rooted within them along with their own brand of ignorant arrogance.
This kind of ignorance makes them feel entitled towards enlightening us or civilizing us; our language culture traditions beliefs are all backward according to them so their mission is assimilating us into “Chinese civilization” making us become just like Han people who speak Mandarin rather than Uyghur speakers!
I remember after countless heated debates between myself & Han colleagues over time; one old teacher named Wang said: “Mr Yiliyasiti! In the past we used say ‘Heaven fears not nor does Earth fear anything except for an old Uyghur speaking Mandarin’. Today however? We know you guys learn Chinese just so you can deal with us.” This statement has been repeated many times since then sometimes vented out angrily sometimes sighed helplessly but sometimes even cursed at full throttle fueled by hatred!
With hopes held high wanting mastery over Mandarin learning knowledge realizing dreams for equal footing alongside Han people- 10 years studying hard behind closed doors mastering Chinese yet ultimately discovering how uncomfortable angry & indignant it made both my Han superiors & colleagues feel even going so far as thinking any dissenting opinions or resistance from myself constituted rebellion deserving punishment!
Nevertheless despite all this hardship endured throughout East Turkestan fluency in Mandarin did not change my status nor fulfill wishes for equality among Han people yet through learning Mandarin gained much knowledge understanding deeper historical context regarding imperial China grasping vastness profundity contained within its culture meeting genuine friends among enlightened open-minded individuals who truly understand freedom & equality concepts! Most importantly though- mastering Mandarin became most powerful tool enabling pursuit toward equal rights freedom standing toe-to-toe versus those advocating unity under imperialist rule actually achieving true parity long ago!
What happened Nov 24 in Urumqi, two Uyghur girls telling from the beginning of the lockdown, what difficulties they were in and how that fire burned lives in Urumqi.
Articles • leo posted the article • 0 comments • 1056 views • 2022-11-26 23:28
What happened Nov 24 in Urumqi, two Uyghur girls telling from the beginning of the lockdown, what difficulties they were in and how that fire burned lives in Urumqi.
Click and watch their voice:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw ... %3D12
They couldn’t escape because their door is locked as required by the zero Covid policy of China.
view all
Click and watch their voice:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw ... %3D12
They couldn’t escape because their door is locked as required by the zero Covid policy of China.
view all
What happened Nov 24 in Urumqi, two Uyghur girls telling from the beginning of the lockdown, what difficulties they were in and how that fire burned lives in Urumqi.
Click and watch their voice:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw ... %3D12
They couldn’t escape because their door is locked as required by the zero Covid policy of China.
Click and watch their voice:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw ... %3D12
They couldn’t escape because their door is locked as required by the zero Covid policy of China.
Protests erupted in front of the Urumqi city government building, which has been in lockdown for 100 days, after a fire killed 10 Uyghurs
Articles • leo posted the article • 0 comments • 812 views • 2022-11-26 23:23
Protests erupted in front of the Urumqi city government building, which has been in lockdown for 100 days, after a fire killed 10 Uyghurs. Voices can be heard chanting, "open up" (end lockdown)
Click and watch the video:
Your browser does not support the video tag. view all
Click and watch the video:
Your browser does not support the video tag. view all
Protests erupted in front of the Urumqi city government building, which has been in lockdown for 100 days, after a fire killed 10 Uyghurs. Voices can be heard chanting, "open up" (end lockdown)
Click and watch the video:
Click and watch the video:
The Han-Chinese citizens are protesting the CCP regime, while over 5 Uyghurs died in this fire disaster.
News • leo posted the article • 0 comments • 854 views • 2022-11-26 22:05
The Han-Chinese citizens are protesting the CCP regime, while over 5 Uyghurs died in this fire disaster. When people talking, Uyghurs are disappearing, when people protest on the streets, Uyghurs are still being locked in concentration camps.
click and watch the video.
Your browser does not support the video tag. view all
click and watch the video.
Your browser does not support the video tag. view all
The Han-Chinese citizens are protesting the CCP regime, while over 5 Uyghurs died in this fire disaster. When people talking, Uyghurs are disappearing, when people protest on the streets, Uyghurs are still being locked in concentration camps.
click and watch the video.
click and watch the video.
Uyghurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, and HongKongers held a joint protest in front of the White House in Washington to protest the repressive policies of the China's government.
News • yakitoriPB posted the article • 0 comments • 959 views • 2022-10-02 23:33
On China's October 1st National Day, Uygurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, and HongKongers in the United States held a joint protest in front of the White House in Washington to protest the repressive policies of the China's government.
view all
view all
On China's October 1st National Day, Uygurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, and HongKongers in the United States held a joint protest in front of the White House in Washington to protest the repressive policies of the China's government.
China is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs | uyghur muslim genocide
News • Justice Brown posted the article • 0 comments • 908 views • 2022-09-11 11:54
Uyghur's vocie: My wife & 4-days old child are dying, don’t know which disease they got, the hospital kicked us out, local authorities didn’t accept our visit. We could find no one to help. Don’t know what to do.
00:00 start
00:10 Uyghur's children haven’t eaten in 3 days as there is no food.
00:23 China’s locking up Uyghurs in their homes and leaving them to starve under the pretext of “Covid lockdowns.”
02:24 China locked down Uyghur houses and Uyghur people asking for food 02:29 Dozens of Uyghurs “protested” against starvation
03:02 Chinese Communist Party is now using "Covid" as a tool to eradicate the Uyghurs
03:29 One Uyghur girl wrote a poem for the death of her sister
05:43 Uyghur are starving to death in China’s zero covid policy
06:02 how the quarantine works under China's 'Zero Covid' policy
06:10 Uyghurs are taken to temporary tents, Han Chinese are taken to hotels
06:27 Hospital kicked Uyghurs out and oneUyghur woman & 4-days old child are dying 07:05 china is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs 07:50 end
view all
Uyghur's vocie: My wife & 4-days old child are dying, don’t know which disease they got, the hospital kicked us out, local authorities didn’t accept our visit. We could find no one to help. Don’t know what to do.
00:00 start
00:10 Uyghur's children haven’t eaten in 3 days as there is no food.
00:23 China’s locking up Uyghurs in their homes and leaving them to starve under the pretext of “Covid lockdowns.”
02:24 China locked down Uyghur houses and Uyghur people asking for food 02:29 Dozens of Uyghurs “protested” against starvation
03:02 Chinese Communist Party is now using "Covid" as a tool to eradicate the Uyghurs
03:29 One Uyghur girl wrote a poem for the death of her sister
05:43 Uyghur are starving to death in China’s zero covid policy
06:02 how the quarantine works under China's 'Zero Covid' policy
06:10 Uyghurs are taken to temporary tents, Han Chinese are taken to hotels
06:27 Hospital kicked Uyghurs out and oneUyghur woman & 4-days old child are dying 07:05 china is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs 07:50 end
China is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs
News • Justice Brown posted the article • 0 comments • 878 views • 2022-09-11 10:12
China is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs. Uyghurs r about to die.They have high fever and are starved, but there are no food or medicine during the lockdown. Chinese Communist Party is now using "Covid" as a tool to eradicate the Uyghurs.
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China is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs. Uyghurs r about to die.They have high fever and are starved, but there are no food or medicine during the lockdown. Chinese Communist Party is now using "Covid" as a tool to eradicate the Uyghurs.
Uyghur genocide camps | Roziqari Dawut, 27, the so-called reason of his imprisonment was having complex social relations。
Uyghur Genocide • Edikan posted the article • 0 comments • 964 views • 2022-09-05 00:16
Innocent Uyghur man was sentenced.Roziqari Dawut, 27, the so-called reason of his imprisonment was having complex social relations, 7 members of the family were detained and gathering a crowd to disturb social order. Where is he? Was he killed?
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Innocent Uyghur man was sentenced.Roziqari Dawut, 27, the so-called reason of his imprisonment was having complex social relations, 7 members of the family were detained and gathering a crowd to disturb social order. Where is he? Was he killed?
Testimony from Uyghurs in China, Abdurehim Turdi died in Uyghur concentration camps.
Uyghur Genocide • Edikan posted the article • 1 comments • 1014 views • 2022-09-04 23:51
Testimony from Uyghurs in China, Abdurehim Turdi died in Konasheher country. His name was mentioned in Xinjiang Police files which includes 23 thousand detainees personal information. The vide said he died there, but there's no any further info, when we're talking, people are dying in Uyghur concentration camps.
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Testimony from Uyghurs in China, Abdurehim Turdi died in Konasheher country. His name was mentioned in Xinjiang Police files which includes 23 thousand detainees personal information. The vide said he died there, but there's no any further info, when we're talking, people are dying in Uyghur concentration camps.
Uyghurs prisoners in Xinjiang are forced to speak in Mandarin and perform obvious displays of subservience to their Chinese guards in monthly video calls with relatives
Articles • mykhan posted the article • 0 comments • 846 views • 2022-07-28 00:19
Uyghurs prisoners in Xinjiang are forced to speak in Mandarin and perform obvious displays of subservience to their Chinese guards in monthly video calls with relatives, Uyghurs living in exile say.
A Uyghur now living in Europe told RFA that her siblings in Sanji Prison in the town of Sanji (in Chinese, Changji) were recently allowed to meet online with other relatives in Aksu (Akesu). Though neither the jailed Uyghurs nor their family members could speak Chinese well, authorities made them communicate in Mandarin for the entire meeting.
“They barely managed to speak in Chinese, according to my relatives who met them onscreen,” the source said. “This is not just an isolated incident.”
Chinese authorities have banned the use of the Uyghur language in schools and government complexes as part of their efforts to diminish the culture and traditions of the largely Muslim community.
But Uyghur families still speak their native tongue inside their homes. The prohibition from doing so on the monthly virtual visits adds a level of frustration for family members who are already anxious about their loved ones’ well-being.
Another Uyghur exile living in Turkey told RFA that her nephew, who was serving a sentence in a prison in Urumqi (Wulumuqi), was forced to speak Chinese to his mother and grandmother, though the latter had to rely on another relative to translate because she did not know Mandarin.
“They allowed them to meet onscreen once every few months for only three minutes,” the source said. “My mother was there once to meet onscreen with my nephew. My mother was very uncomfortable hearing my nephew speaking to them in Chinese. My nephew’s wife fainted at the time, hearing him speak only in Chinese.
“On-screen, my nephew had to bow while walking backward saying goodbye in traditional Chinese fashion,” she added. “He also had kowtow to the Chinese police for giving him the chance to see his relatives onscreen.”
Tahir Mutällip Qahiri, a Uyghur Muslim lecturer in the Uyghur language and literature at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said he noticed a difference in the way his detained father interacted with him during a video call.
His father, well-known Uyghur scholar and activist Mutallib Siddiq Qahiri, used to work at Kashgar University and wrote and edited more than 20 books on Uyghur and Arabic culture until he was arrested in 2018 and charged with “incitement to ethnic hatred,” according to a September 2020 article in the Byline Times. In early 2020, authorities sentenced him to 30 months in prison with four years of probation.
Tahir said he was able to see his father after he was released from detention, but that the man “was not as free as the Uyghur prisoners who recently had spoken with their relatives onscreen.”
Although the two spoke Uyghur to one another, Tahir said he believed his father was under surveillance by authorities because he told his son to remain silent and to defend the Chinese state.
“In March 2019, I was able to talk to my father onscreen twice for a very short time, and what I sensed from those virtual interactions was that he had no freedom at all in his speech,” he said. “I didn’t see any Chinese police present when I spoke to him onscreen, but what I knew was all he said was in a Chinese framework, even though it was uttered in the Uyghur language.
“From the context of his speech and his body language, I was able to conclude that even though he didn’t speak in Chinese, it was all Chinese propaganda,” he added. “I sensed a great fear he had for the Chinese authorities.”
Tahir said that compared to the time he first spoke to his father when he was released from detention to house arrest, the current situation of Uyghur detainees appears to have gotten worse. Noting that authorities’ efforts to eradicate the Uyghur language is part of the genocide China has been committing against the ethnic and religious minority group in recent years.
'Culturally savage'
At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities, though Beijing claimed they were “vocation training centers,” which are now all closed.
Credible accounts of the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, severe human rights abuses and efforts to obliterate Uyghur culture and religion have prompted the United States and some Western legislatures to declare a genocide and crimes against humanity in the region.
Forcing Uyghur prisoners to speak Mandarin and to bow in an outdated Chinese fashion is “culturally savage and politically extremist,” Tahir said.
In an audio recording provided to RFA by a Uyghur living in the U.S., a Uyghur woman living in Urumqi used an interpreter to speak in Chinese to her son, who is in a prison in Xinjiang.
The woman then cries as her son in Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is forced to kowtow to Chinese police officers during his online meeting with her.
“Her son is only 25 or 26, and now he’s forced to speak in Chinese and bow to the Chinese while walking backward onscreen,” said the Uyghur in exile.
According to the audio, the son was on his knees when he bowed his head in gratitude to the Chinese police, with his forehead almost touching the floor, his mother told the Uyghur in exile.
“My son’s forehead was almost on the floor when he bowed to the police,” the mother told her Uyghur relative in exile. “I hope my defenseless son will soon see sunshine [and] will meet his loving relatives in freedom.”
Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in the U.S. and vice chairman of the executive committee of the World Uyghur Congress, told RFA that he also received a video of a Uyghur prisoner speaking in Chinese with a relative during a videoconference, though the person did not understand Mandarin.
Speaking in a mother tongue is a basic necessity and right of the people, though Chinese authorities have stripped that right away from the Uyghurs, he said.
Police officers take the relatives of Uyghur prisoners to government complexes each month to see their imprisoned relatives over video. Both the prisoners and their relatives meet under police surveillance, Uyghur sources and a police officer involved in monitoring the visits told RFA.
A police officer who is in charge of such surveillance in Kashgar (Kashi) said on two scheduled days each month he takes the family members of Uyghur prisoners to a neighborhood committee complex where they can virtually meet with the detainees.
“Twice a month, we allow them to meet onscreen,” he said. “We take the relatives to the neighborhood community complex. Some months they were not allowed to meet because of COVID-19 prevention policy.”
Relatives often have to wait one to two hours for their turn. The calls usually last about two minutes and are conducted in Chinese, said the officer, who did not give his name so as to speak freely.
Police officers do not allow detainees’ relatives to say anything except to express their well-being and to thank the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. view all
A Uyghur now living in Europe told RFA that her siblings in Sanji Prison in the town of Sanji (in Chinese, Changji) were recently allowed to meet online with other relatives in Aksu (Akesu). Though neither the jailed Uyghurs nor their family members could speak Chinese well, authorities made them communicate in Mandarin for the entire meeting.
“They barely managed to speak in Chinese, according to my relatives who met them onscreen,” the source said. “This is not just an isolated incident.”
Chinese authorities have banned the use of the Uyghur language in schools and government complexes as part of their efforts to diminish the culture and traditions of the largely Muslim community.
But Uyghur families still speak their native tongue inside their homes. The prohibition from doing so on the monthly virtual visits adds a level of frustration for family members who are already anxious about their loved ones’ well-being.
Another Uyghur exile living in Turkey told RFA that her nephew, who was serving a sentence in a prison in Urumqi (Wulumuqi), was forced to speak Chinese to his mother and grandmother, though the latter had to rely on another relative to translate because she did not know Mandarin.
“They allowed them to meet onscreen once every few months for only three minutes,” the source said. “My mother was there once to meet onscreen with my nephew. My mother was very uncomfortable hearing my nephew speaking to them in Chinese. My nephew’s wife fainted at the time, hearing him speak only in Chinese.
“On-screen, my nephew had to bow while walking backward saying goodbye in traditional Chinese fashion,” she added. “He also had kowtow to the Chinese police for giving him the chance to see his relatives onscreen.”
Tahir Mutällip Qahiri, a Uyghur Muslim lecturer in the Uyghur language and literature at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said he noticed a difference in the way his detained father interacted with him during a video call.
His father, well-known Uyghur scholar and activist Mutallib Siddiq Qahiri, used to work at Kashgar University and wrote and edited more than 20 books on Uyghur and Arabic culture until he was arrested in 2018 and charged with “incitement to ethnic hatred,” according to a September 2020 article in the Byline Times. In early 2020, authorities sentenced him to 30 months in prison with four years of probation.
Tahir said he was able to see his father after he was released from detention, but that the man “was not as free as the Uyghur prisoners who recently had spoken with their relatives onscreen.”
Although the two spoke Uyghur to one another, Tahir said he believed his father was under surveillance by authorities because he told his son to remain silent and to defend the Chinese state.
“In March 2019, I was able to talk to my father onscreen twice for a very short time, and what I sensed from those virtual interactions was that he had no freedom at all in his speech,” he said. “I didn’t see any Chinese police present when I spoke to him onscreen, but what I knew was all he said was in a Chinese framework, even though it was uttered in the Uyghur language.
“From the context of his speech and his body language, I was able to conclude that even though he didn’t speak in Chinese, it was all Chinese propaganda,” he added. “I sensed a great fear he had for the Chinese authorities.”
Tahir said that compared to the time he first spoke to his father when he was released from detention to house arrest, the current situation of Uyghur detainees appears to have gotten worse. Noting that authorities’ efforts to eradicate the Uyghur language is part of the genocide China has been committing against the ethnic and religious minority group in recent years.
'Culturally savage'
At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities, though Beijing claimed they were “vocation training centers,” which are now all closed.
Credible accounts of the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, severe human rights abuses and efforts to obliterate Uyghur culture and religion have prompted the United States and some Western legislatures to declare a genocide and crimes against humanity in the region.
Forcing Uyghur prisoners to speak Mandarin and to bow in an outdated Chinese fashion is “culturally savage and politically extremist,” Tahir said.
In an audio recording provided to RFA by a Uyghur living in the U.S., a Uyghur woman living in Urumqi used an interpreter to speak in Chinese to her son, who is in a prison in Xinjiang.
The woman then cries as her son in Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is forced to kowtow to Chinese police officers during his online meeting with her.
“Her son is only 25 or 26, and now he’s forced to speak in Chinese and bow to the Chinese while walking backward onscreen,” said the Uyghur in exile.
According to the audio, the son was on his knees when he bowed his head in gratitude to the Chinese police, with his forehead almost touching the floor, his mother told the Uyghur in exile.
“My son’s forehead was almost on the floor when he bowed to the police,” the mother told her Uyghur relative in exile. “I hope my defenseless son will soon see sunshine [and] will meet his loving relatives in freedom.”
Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in the U.S. and vice chairman of the executive committee of the World Uyghur Congress, told RFA that he also received a video of a Uyghur prisoner speaking in Chinese with a relative during a videoconference, though the person did not understand Mandarin.
Speaking in a mother tongue is a basic necessity and right of the people, though Chinese authorities have stripped that right away from the Uyghurs, he said.
Police officers take the relatives of Uyghur prisoners to government complexes each month to see their imprisoned relatives over video. Both the prisoners and their relatives meet under police surveillance, Uyghur sources and a police officer involved in monitoring the visits told RFA.
A police officer who is in charge of such surveillance in Kashgar (Kashi) said on two scheduled days each month he takes the family members of Uyghur prisoners to a neighborhood committee complex where they can virtually meet with the detainees.
“Twice a month, we allow them to meet onscreen,” he said. “We take the relatives to the neighborhood community complex. Some months they were not allowed to meet because of COVID-19 prevention policy.”
Relatives often have to wait one to two hours for their turn. The calls usually last about two minutes and are conducted in Chinese, said the officer, who did not give his name so as to speak freely.
Police officers do not allow detainees’ relatives to say anything except to express their well-being and to thank the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. view all
Uyghurs prisoners in Xinjiang are forced to speak in Mandarin and perform obvious displays of subservience to their Chinese guards in monthly video calls with relatives, Uyghurs living in exile say.
A Uyghur now living in Europe told RFA that her siblings in Sanji Prison in the town of Sanji (in Chinese, Changji) were recently allowed to meet online with other relatives in Aksu (Akesu). Though neither the jailed Uyghurs nor their family members could speak Chinese well, authorities made them communicate in Mandarin for the entire meeting.
“They barely managed to speak in Chinese, according to my relatives who met them onscreen,” the source said. “This is not just an isolated incident.”
Chinese authorities have banned the use of the Uyghur language in schools and government complexes as part of their efforts to diminish the culture and traditions of the largely Muslim community.
But Uyghur families still speak their native tongue inside their homes. The prohibition from doing so on the monthly virtual visits adds a level of frustration for family members who are already anxious about their loved ones’ well-being.
Another Uyghur exile living in Turkey told RFA that her nephew, who was serving a sentence in a prison in Urumqi (Wulumuqi), was forced to speak Chinese to his mother and grandmother, though the latter had to rely on another relative to translate because she did not know Mandarin.
“They allowed them to meet onscreen once every few months for only three minutes,” the source said. “My mother was there once to meet onscreen with my nephew. My mother was very uncomfortable hearing my nephew speaking to them in Chinese. My nephew’s wife fainted at the time, hearing him speak only in Chinese.
“On-screen, my nephew had to bow while walking backward saying goodbye in traditional Chinese fashion,” she added. “He also had kowtow to the Chinese police for giving him the chance to see his relatives onscreen.”
Tahir Mutällip Qahiri, a Uyghur Muslim lecturer in the Uyghur language and literature at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said he noticed a difference in the way his detained father interacted with him during a video call.
His father, well-known Uyghur scholar and activist Mutallib Siddiq Qahiri, used to work at Kashgar University and wrote and edited more than 20 books on Uyghur and Arabic culture until he was arrested in 2018 and charged with “incitement to ethnic hatred,” according to a September 2020 article in the Byline Times. In early 2020, authorities sentenced him to 30 months in prison with four years of probation.
Tahir said he was able to see his father after he was released from detention, but that the man “was not as free as the Uyghur prisoners who recently had spoken with their relatives onscreen.”
Although the two spoke Uyghur to one another, Tahir said he believed his father was under surveillance by authorities because he told his son to remain silent and to defend the Chinese state.
“In March 2019, I was able to talk to my father onscreen twice for a very short time, and what I sensed from those virtual interactions was that he had no freedom at all in his speech,” he said. “I didn’t see any Chinese police present when I spoke to him onscreen, but what I knew was all he said was in a Chinese framework, even though it was uttered in the Uyghur language.
“From the context of his speech and his body language, I was able to conclude that even though he didn’t speak in Chinese, it was all Chinese propaganda,” he added. “I sensed a great fear he had for the Chinese authorities.”
Tahir said that compared to the time he first spoke to his father when he was released from detention to house arrest, the current situation of Uyghur detainees appears to have gotten worse. Noting that authorities’ efforts to eradicate the Uyghur language is part of the genocide China has been committing against the ethnic and religious minority group in recent years.
'Culturally savage'
At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities, though Beijing claimed they were “vocation training centers,” which are now all closed.
Credible accounts of the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, severe human rights abuses and efforts to obliterate Uyghur culture and religion have prompted the United States and some Western legislatures to declare a genocide and crimes against humanity in the region.
Forcing Uyghur prisoners to speak Mandarin and to bow in an outdated Chinese fashion is “culturally savage and politically extremist,” Tahir said.
In an audio recording provided to RFA by a Uyghur living in the U.S., a Uyghur woman living in Urumqi used an interpreter to speak in Chinese to her son, who is in a prison in Xinjiang.
The woman then cries as her son in Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is forced to kowtow to Chinese police officers during his online meeting with her.
“Her son is only 25 or 26, and now he’s forced to speak in Chinese and bow to the Chinese while walking backward onscreen,” said the Uyghur in exile.
According to the audio, the son was on his knees when he bowed his head in gratitude to the Chinese police, with his forehead almost touching the floor, his mother told the Uyghur in exile.
“My son’s forehead was almost on the floor when he bowed to the police,” the mother told her Uyghur relative in exile. “I hope my defenseless son will soon see sunshine [and] will meet his loving relatives in freedom.”
Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in the U.S. and vice chairman of the executive committee of the World Uyghur Congress, told RFA that he also received a video of a Uyghur prisoner speaking in Chinese with a relative during a videoconference, though the person did not understand Mandarin.
Speaking in a mother tongue is a basic necessity and right of the people, though Chinese authorities have stripped that right away from the Uyghurs, he said.
Police officers take the relatives of Uyghur prisoners to government complexes each month to see their imprisoned relatives over video. Both the prisoners and their relatives meet under police surveillance, Uyghur sources and a police officer involved in monitoring the visits told RFA.
A police officer who is in charge of such surveillance in Kashgar (Kashi) said on two scheduled days each month he takes the family members of Uyghur prisoners to a neighborhood committee complex where they can virtually meet with the detainees.
“Twice a month, we allow them to meet onscreen,” he said. “We take the relatives to the neighborhood community complex. Some months they were not allowed to meet because of COVID-19 prevention policy.”
Relatives often have to wait one to two hours for their turn. The calls usually last about two minutes and are conducted in Chinese, said the officer, who did not give his name so as to speak freely.
Police officers do not allow detainees’ relatives to say anything except to express their well-being and to thank the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
A Uyghur now living in Europe told RFA that her siblings in Sanji Prison in the town of Sanji (in Chinese, Changji) were recently allowed to meet online with other relatives in Aksu (Akesu). Though neither the jailed Uyghurs nor their family members could speak Chinese well, authorities made them communicate in Mandarin for the entire meeting.
“They barely managed to speak in Chinese, according to my relatives who met them onscreen,” the source said. “This is not just an isolated incident.”
Chinese authorities have banned the use of the Uyghur language in schools and government complexes as part of their efforts to diminish the culture and traditions of the largely Muslim community.
But Uyghur families still speak their native tongue inside their homes. The prohibition from doing so on the monthly virtual visits adds a level of frustration for family members who are already anxious about their loved ones’ well-being.
Another Uyghur exile living in Turkey told RFA that her nephew, who was serving a sentence in a prison in Urumqi (Wulumuqi), was forced to speak Chinese to his mother and grandmother, though the latter had to rely on another relative to translate because she did not know Mandarin.
“They allowed them to meet onscreen once every few months for only three minutes,” the source said. “My mother was there once to meet onscreen with my nephew. My mother was very uncomfortable hearing my nephew speaking to them in Chinese. My nephew’s wife fainted at the time, hearing him speak only in Chinese.
“On-screen, my nephew had to bow while walking backward saying goodbye in traditional Chinese fashion,” she added. “He also had kowtow to the Chinese police for giving him the chance to see his relatives onscreen.”
Tahir Mutällip Qahiri, a Uyghur Muslim lecturer in the Uyghur language and literature at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said he noticed a difference in the way his detained father interacted with him during a video call.
His father, well-known Uyghur scholar and activist Mutallib Siddiq Qahiri, used to work at Kashgar University and wrote and edited more than 20 books on Uyghur and Arabic culture until he was arrested in 2018 and charged with “incitement to ethnic hatred,” according to a September 2020 article in the Byline Times. In early 2020, authorities sentenced him to 30 months in prison with four years of probation.
Tahir said he was able to see his father after he was released from detention, but that the man “was not as free as the Uyghur prisoners who recently had spoken with their relatives onscreen.”
Although the two spoke Uyghur to one another, Tahir said he believed his father was under surveillance by authorities because he told his son to remain silent and to defend the Chinese state.
“In March 2019, I was able to talk to my father onscreen twice for a very short time, and what I sensed from those virtual interactions was that he had no freedom at all in his speech,” he said. “I didn’t see any Chinese police present when I spoke to him onscreen, but what I knew was all he said was in a Chinese framework, even though it was uttered in the Uyghur language.
“From the context of his speech and his body language, I was able to conclude that even though he didn’t speak in Chinese, it was all Chinese propaganda,” he added. “I sensed a great fear he had for the Chinese authorities.”
Tahir said that compared to the time he first spoke to his father when he was released from detention to house arrest, the current situation of Uyghur detainees appears to have gotten worse. Noting that authorities’ efforts to eradicate the Uyghur language is part of the genocide China has been committing against the ethnic and religious minority group in recent years.
'Culturally savage'
At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities, though Beijing claimed they were “vocation training centers,” which are now all closed.
Credible accounts of the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, severe human rights abuses and efforts to obliterate Uyghur culture and religion have prompted the United States and some Western legislatures to declare a genocide and crimes against humanity in the region.
Forcing Uyghur prisoners to speak Mandarin and to bow in an outdated Chinese fashion is “culturally savage and politically extremist,” Tahir said.
In an audio recording provided to RFA by a Uyghur living in the U.S., a Uyghur woman living in Urumqi used an interpreter to speak in Chinese to her son, who is in a prison in Xinjiang.
The woman then cries as her son in Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is forced to kowtow to Chinese police officers during his online meeting with her.
“Her son is only 25 or 26, and now he’s forced to speak in Chinese and bow to the Chinese while walking backward onscreen,” said the Uyghur in exile.
According to the audio, the son was on his knees when he bowed his head in gratitude to the Chinese police, with his forehead almost touching the floor, his mother told the Uyghur in exile.
“My son’s forehead was almost on the floor when he bowed to the police,” the mother told her Uyghur relative in exile. “I hope my defenseless son will soon see sunshine [and] will meet his loving relatives in freedom.”
Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in the U.S. and vice chairman of the executive committee of the World Uyghur Congress, told RFA that he also received a video of a Uyghur prisoner speaking in Chinese with a relative during a videoconference, though the person did not understand Mandarin.
Speaking in a mother tongue is a basic necessity and right of the people, though Chinese authorities have stripped that right away from the Uyghurs, he said.
Police officers take the relatives of Uyghur prisoners to government complexes each month to see their imprisoned relatives over video. Both the prisoners and their relatives meet under police surveillance, Uyghur sources and a police officer involved in monitoring the visits told RFA.
A police officer who is in charge of such surveillance in Kashgar (Kashi) said on two scheduled days each month he takes the family members of Uyghur prisoners to a neighborhood committee complex where they can virtually meet with the detainees.
“Twice a month, we allow them to meet onscreen,” he said. “We take the relatives to the neighborhood community complex. Some months they were not allowed to meet because of COVID-19 prevention policy.”
Relatives often have to wait one to two hours for their turn. The calls usually last about two minutes and are conducted in Chinese, said the officer, who did not give his name so as to speak freely.
Police officers do not allow detainees’ relatives to say anything except to express their well-being and to thank the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions by making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people
News • jamila posted the article • 2 comments • 903 views • 2024-07-26 04:41
The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions by making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements.
On an important Muslim holiday last month, police and security officials in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang set up camps to keep an eye on Uyghurs, took Uyghurs to see communist-themed films, and visited Uyghur homes to make sure they weren’t practicing Muslim religious activities.
The moves around the Qurban Eid, also known as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice, which fell on June 17 this year in Xinjiang — one of two official Muslim holidays in China — appeared to be attempts to undermine the observation of the Muslim holy day, outside experts said.
Chinese authorities are trying to weaken Uyghurs’ ethnic and religious identity and forge their loyalty to the Chinese state and the Communist Party, while maintaining security, the experts said.
“It looks like they are trying to Sinicize Eid,” said Erkin Ekrem, a professor at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and vice president of the World Uyghur Congress.
“The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions [by] making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements,” he added.
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A screen displays Chinese President Xi Jinping near a mosque in Kashgar, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, June 4, 2019. (AFPTV)
Before 2017, when the Chinese government started cracking down on religious activities in the predominantly Muslim region, men would observe the holiday by visiting mosques for special prayers, cooking meals, spending time with relatives and welcoming guests to their homes.
Since then, authorities have also forbidden Islamic dress for women, beards for men, and Muslim names for children. They have also prevented Uyghurs from fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and encouraged the consumption of pork and alcohol, which Islam forbids.
Chinese national consciousness
On the eve of Eid, Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, visited communities in Urumqi, the region’s capital, and asked residents to strengthen Chinese national consciousness and insist on the Sinicization of Islam.
Public security officers celebrated the holiday with Uyghurs and other ethnicities in Xinjiang and promoted “the common consciousness of the Chinese nation,” the Xinjiang Daily reported on June 19.
The Keriye County Public Security Bureau in Hotan invited teachers at area primary schools, students and parents on June 16 to participate in social activities at a police camp to “build strong Chinese national consciousness and celebrate Eid,” the report said.
On the same day, police in Qitai county in the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture invited Uyghur “relatives” with whom they had been paired up under a previous monitoring program to visit a museum to watch communist-themed films.
On June 17, members of the Public Security Bureau in the prefecture’s Manas county visited Uyghur homes and danced with residents, who had no choice but to join in, the news report said.
“The police showed their concern for the public by their actions and also planted the seeds of national unity deep in everyone’s hearts,” it said.
Assimilation policies
Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said public security agents interfere in Muslim holidays like Eid al-Adha to push assimilationist policies in Xinjiang.
Uyghur identification with Turkic culture along with a belief in Islam and related social and political values are considered a threat because they are outside the control of the Chinese state, he told Radio Free Asia.
Attendees watch video of a Muslim praying during a government reception held for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Beijing, China, May 13, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
“China’s policies are intended to weaken those kinds of affinities outside which are beyond the borders of China and to ensure Uyghurs allegiances are pinned to the Chinese state and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party,” Szadziewski said.
But the Chinese government separates Islam in China from Islam in the rest of the world, Erkin Ekrem of the World Uyghur Congress said.
“In China, the Sinicization of Islam is being carried out vigorously,” he told RFA. “They are trying to create a nation away from Islamic beliefs and customs.”
“Deemphasizing the religion adding in this secular Chinese national consciousness [is] meant to delink Eid al-Adha from its religious origin,” he said. “That is one of the aims here.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster. view all
On an important Muslim holiday last month, police and security officials in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang set up camps to keep an eye on Uyghurs, took Uyghurs to see communist-themed films, and visited Uyghur homes to make sure they weren’t practicing Muslim religious activities.
The moves around the Qurban Eid, also known as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice, which fell on June 17 this year in Xinjiang — one of two official Muslim holidays in China — appeared to be attempts to undermine the observation of the Muslim holy day, outside experts said.
Chinese authorities are trying to weaken Uyghurs’ ethnic and religious identity and forge their loyalty to the Chinese state and the Communist Party, while maintaining security, the experts said.
“It looks like they are trying to Sinicize Eid,” said Erkin Ekrem, a professor at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and vice president of the World Uyghur Congress.
“The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions [by] making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements,” he added.
RELATED STORIES
China pushes ‘Sinicization of Islam’ in Xinjiang as Ramadan arrives
Most Uyghurs banned from praying on Islamic holiday, even in their homes
Chinese use Muslim holiday for propaganda purposes, celebrating with Uyghurs
A screen displays Chinese President Xi Jinping near a mosque in Kashgar, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, June 4, 2019. (AFPTV)
Before 2017, when the Chinese government started cracking down on religious activities in the predominantly Muslim region, men would observe the holiday by visiting mosques for special prayers, cooking meals, spending time with relatives and welcoming guests to their homes.
Since then, authorities have also forbidden Islamic dress for women, beards for men, and Muslim names for children. They have also prevented Uyghurs from fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and encouraged the consumption of pork and alcohol, which Islam forbids.
Chinese national consciousness
On the eve of Eid, Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, visited communities in Urumqi, the region’s capital, and asked residents to strengthen Chinese national consciousness and insist on the Sinicization of Islam.
Public security officers celebrated the holiday with Uyghurs and other ethnicities in Xinjiang and promoted “the common consciousness of the Chinese nation,” the Xinjiang Daily reported on June 19.
The Keriye County Public Security Bureau in Hotan invited teachers at area primary schools, students and parents on June 16 to participate in social activities at a police camp to “build strong Chinese national consciousness and celebrate Eid,” the report said.
On the same day, police in Qitai county in the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture invited Uyghur “relatives” with whom they had been paired up under a previous monitoring program to visit a museum to watch communist-themed films.
On June 17, members of the Public Security Bureau in the prefecture’s Manas county visited Uyghur homes and danced with residents, who had no choice but to join in, the news report said.
“The police showed their concern for the public by their actions and also planted the seeds of national unity deep in everyone’s hearts,” it said.
Assimilation policies
Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said public security agents interfere in Muslim holidays like Eid al-Adha to push assimilationist policies in Xinjiang.
Uyghur identification with Turkic culture along with a belief in Islam and related social and political values are considered a threat because they are outside the control of the Chinese state, he told Radio Free Asia.
Attendees watch video of a Muslim praying during a government reception held for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Beijing, China, May 13, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
“China’s policies are intended to weaken those kinds of affinities outside which are beyond the borders of China and to ensure Uyghurs allegiances are pinned to the Chinese state and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party,” Szadziewski said.
But the Chinese government separates Islam in China from Islam in the rest of the world, Erkin Ekrem of the World Uyghur Congress said.
“In China, the Sinicization of Islam is being carried out vigorously,” he told RFA. “They are trying to create a nation away from Islamic beliefs and customs.”
“Deemphasizing the religion adding in this secular Chinese national consciousness [is] meant to delink Eid al-Adha from its religious origin,” he said. “That is one of the aims here.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster. view all
The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions by making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements.
On an important Muslim holiday last month, police and security officials in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang set up camps to keep an eye on Uyghurs, took Uyghurs to see communist-themed films, and visited Uyghur homes to make sure they weren’t practicing Muslim religious activities.
The moves around the Qurban Eid, also known as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice, which fell on June 17 this year in Xinjiang — one of two official Muslim holidays in China — appeared to be attempts to undermine the observation of the Muslim holy day, outside experts said.
Chinese authorities are trying to weaken Uyghurs’ ethnic and religious identity and forge their loyalty to the Chinese state and the Communist Party, while maintaining security, the experts said.
“It looks like they are trying to Sinicize Eid,” said Erkin Ekrem, a professor at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and vice president of the World Uyghur Congress.
“The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions [by] making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements,” he added.
RELATED STORIES
China pushes ‘Sinicization of Islam’ in Xinjiang as Ramadan arrives
Most Uyghurs banned from praying on Islamic holiday, even in their homes
Chinese use Muslim holiday for propaganda purposes, celebrating with Uyghurs
A screen displays Chinese President Xi Jinping near a mosque in Kashgar, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, June 4, 2019. (AFPTV)
Before 2017, when the Chinese government started cracking down on religious activities in the predominantly Muslim region, men would observe the holiday by visiting mosques for special prayers, cooking meals, spending time with relatives and welcoming guests to their homes.
Since then, authorities have also forbidden Islamic dress for women, beards for men, and Muslim names for children. They have also prevented Uyghurs from fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and encouraged the consumption of pork and alcohol, which Islam forbids.
Chinese national consciousness
On the eve of Eid, Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, visited communities in Urumqi, the region’s capital, and asked residents to strengthen Chinese national consciousness and insist on the Sinicization of Islam.
Public security officers celebrated the holiday with Uyghurs and other ethnicities in Xinjiang and promoted “the common consciousness of the Chinese nation,” the Xinjiang Daily reported on June 19.
The Keriye County Public Security Bureau in Hotan invited teachers at area primary schools, students and parents on June 16 to participate in social activities at a police camp to “build strong Chinese national consciousness and celebrate Eid,” the report said.
On the same day, police in Qitai county in the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture invited Uyghur “relatives” with whom they had been paired up under a previous monitoring program to visit a museum to watch communist-themed films.
On June 17, members of the Public Security Bureau in the prefecture’s Manas county visited Uyghur homes and danced with residents, who had no choice but to join in, the news report said.
“The police showed their concern for the public by their actions and also planted the seeds of national unity deep in everyone’s hearts,” it said.
Assimilation policies
Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said public security agents interfere in Muslim holidays like Eid al-Adha to push assimilationist policies in Xinjiang.
Uyghur identification with Turkic culture along with a belief in Islam and related social and political values are considered a threat because they are outside the control of the Chinese state, he told Radio Free Asia.
Attendees watch video of a Muslim praying during a government reception held for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Beijing, China, May 13, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
“China’s policies are intended to weaken those kinds of affinities outside which are beyond the borders of China and to ensure Uyghurs allegiances are pinned to the Chinese state and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party,” Szadziewski said.
But the Chinese government separates Islam in China from Islam in the rest of the world, Erkin Ekrem of the World Uyghur Congress said.
“In China, the Sinicization of Islam is being carried out vigorously,” he told RFA. “They are trying to create a nation away from Islamic beliefs and customs.”
“Deemphasizing the religion adding in this secular Chinese national consciousness [is] meant to delink Eid al-Adha from its religious origin,” he said. “That is one of the aims here.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
On an important Muslim holiday last month, police and security officials in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang set up camps to keep an eye on Uyghurs, took Uyghurs to see communist-themed films, and visited Uyghur homes to make sure they weren’t practicing Muslim religious activities.
The moves around the Qurban Eid, also known as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice, which fell on June 17 this year in Xinjiang — one of two official Muslim holidays in China — appeared to be attempts to undermine the observation of the Muslim holy day, outside experts said.
Chinese authorities are trying to weaken Uyghurs’ ethnic and religious identity and forge their loyalty to the Chinese state and the Communist Party, while maintaining security, the experts said.
“It looks like they are trying to Sinicize Eid,” said Erkin Ekrem, a professor at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and vice president of the World Uyghur Congress.
“The Chinese government is trying to change the Eid customs, prayers and traditions [by] making Uyghurs consume food along with Chinese people [and] adding Chinese elements to the Eid festivals, thereby removing the Muslim Eid elements,” he added.
RELATED STORIES
China pushes ‘Sinicization of Islam’ in Xinjiang as Ramadan arrives
Most Uyghurs banned from praying on Islamic holiday, even in their homes
Chinese use Muslim holiday for propaganda purposes, celebrating with Uyghurs
A screen displays Chinese President Xi Jinping near a mosque in Kashgar, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, June 4, 2019. (AFPTV)
Before 2017, when the Chinese government started cracking down on religious activities in the predominantly Muslim region, men would observe the holiday by visiting mosques for special prayers, cooking meals, spending time with relatives and welcoming guests to their homes.
Since then, authorities have also forbidden Islamic dress for women, beards for men, and Muslim names for children. They have also prevented Uyghurs from fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and encouraged the consumption of pork and alcohol, which Islam forbids.
Chinese national consciousness
On the eve of Eid, Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, visited communities in Urumqi, the region’s capital, and asked residents to strengthen Chinese national consciousness and insist on the Sinicization of Islam.
Public security officers celebrated the holiday with Uyghurs and other ethnicities in Xinjiang and promoted “the common consciousness of the Chinese nation,” the Xinjiang Daily reported on June 19.
The Keriye County Public Security Bureau in Hotan invited teachers at area primary schools, students and parents on June 16 to participate in social activities at a police camp to “build strong Chinese national consciousness and celebrate Eid,” the report said.
On the same day, police in Qitai county in the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture invited Uyghur “relatives” with whom they had been paired up under a previous monitoring program to visit a museum to watch communist-themed films.
On June 17, members of the Public Security Bureau in the prefecture’s Manas county visited Uyghur homes and danced with residents, who had no choice but to join in, the news report said.
“The police showed their concern for the public by their actions and also planted the seeds of national unity deep in everyone’s hearts,” it said.
Assimilation policies
Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said public security agents interfere in Muslim holidays like Eid al-Adha to push assimilationist policies in Xinjiang.
Uyghur identification with Turkic culture along with a belief in Islam and related social and political values are considered a threat because they are outside the control of the Chinese state, he told Radio Free Asia.
Attendees watch video of a Muslim praying during a government reception held for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Beijing, China, May 13, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
“China’s policies are intended to weaken those kinds of affinities outside which are beyond the borders of China and to ensure Uyghurs allegiances are pinned to the Chinese state and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party,” Szadziewski said.
But the Chinese government separates Islam in China from Islam in the rest of the world, Erkin Ekrem of the World Uyghur Congress said.
“In China, the Sinicization of Islam is being carried out vigorously,” he told RFA. “They are trying to create a nation away from Islamic beliefs and customs.”
“Deemphasizing the religion adding in this secular Chinese national consciousness [is] meant to delink Eid al-Adha from its religious origin,” he said. “That is one of the aims here.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
China’s surveilling the phones of Uyghurs
News • karin posted the article • 0 comments • 839 views • 2023-05-05 11:14
China’s surveilling the phones of Uyghurs for “violent” content, like material that promotes self-determination,
Human Rights Watch says. 57% of content flagged was common religious material like Quran readings. China forced 1M+ Uyghur & other Muslims into “re-education” camps, experts say. view all
Human Rights Watch says. 57% of content flagged was common religious material like Quran readings. China forced 1M+ Uyghur & other Muslims into “re-education” camps, experts say. view all
China’s surveilling the phones of Uyghurs for “violent” content, like material that promotes self-determination,
Human Rights Watch says. 57% of content flagged was common religious material like Quran readings. China forced 1M+ Uyghur & other Muslims into “re-education” camps, experts say.
Human Rights Watch says. 57% of content flagged was common religious material like Quran readings. China forced 1M+ Uyghur & other Muslims into “re-education” camps, experts say.
Focusing on Uyghurs | Iliyas: Why do I need to learn Chinese?
Articles • Dmitry posted the article • 0 comments • 1080 views • 2023-03-16 07:50
Many people often ask me, 'Your Chinese is so good, how did you learn it? Do you know Uyghur?' On the internet, there are also people who frequently ask me, 'Since you are so against China, why do you still study and use Chinese? Why not write in Uyghur?' Although I always smile and brush off these questions, especially the latter one keeps coming up. After a while, I feel that maybe I should give an answer.
Today, I will talk about how I chose to learn Chinese and how I learned it. Also, what was my purpose for learning Chinese. This can be considered as a summary of my experience in learning the language and my motivation and goals for doing so.
To be honest, learning Chinese was not my choice but rather my parents' decision. They forced me to learn it!
I have mentioned this briefly in some of my previous articles; originally born in Quruqhay Township in Yili (Xinjiang), where I grew up with my grandparents. Around 1970 when I started third grade at a Uyghur elementary school there suddenly came a time when my parents visited from Hami to see us on vacation. They wanted me to go back with them to Hami city for schooling.
Going to school in the city had great appeal for me as a child growing up in rural areas even though leaving behind grandparents who raised me made it difficult for me emotionally; however curiosity led me follow along with them away from beautiful mountain village Quruqhay Township filled with clear waters and fragrant fruits through several days of horse-drawn carriage rides followed by long-distance bus trips before finally arriving at Hami Railway Area.
Completely unexpected were rows upon rows of pale dilapidated railway flats highlighting poverty-stricken self-built small courtyard walls high or low unevenly distributed throughout area's dusty narrow roads pitted year-round emitting odors every crossroads having at least one or two open-air toilets which made lose interest completely towards cities - accurately speaking - disgust arose within myself.
Furthermore almost no Uyghurs lived around Hami Railway Area where we resided only two or three families were present; since unable speak Mandarin (Chinese) thus confined inside home feeling deceived by parents' actions wrote secretly letter asking grandparents come rescue immediately after approximately one or two months later they appeared unexpectedly taking week-long visit bringing freedom returning back home Quruqhay.
However, the good times didn't last long. My parents came again, bringing with them more new clothes, candies and biscuits as material temptations. They repeatedly urged me to learn Chinese and described a bright future of growing up in the city. They told me that if I learned Chinese, I could work on the railway in the future with high salary and job security. Although I didn't quite understand what high salary and job security meant, under my grandparents' persuasion, I knew that working on the railway was much better than farming in rural areas.
Under my parents' sugar-coated bullets and promises of a better future, I followed them to Hami once again. But this time, I persisted.
In autumn when school started, I entered Hami Railway Elementary School No. 4 not far from my home to begin learning Chinese language from scratch since at that time I did not know any Chinese words.
At first it was very difficult for me; besides arithmetic problems which were easy for me because they are universal across languages ,I couldn't understand anything else teachers said or communicate effectively with classmates except through gestures or body language . However,I persevered knowing that hard work pays off eventually . After several months of hard work ,I began to understand spoken Mandarin ; by second semester ,I had already made it into top ten students in class .
While studying Uyghur script at Quruhay Primary School back then there were no other books available except Mao's quotations but at Hami where we studied Mandarin there were many different kinds of books available . With mastery over Mandarin language ,I read extensively all sorts of books which further piqued my interest towards learning Mandarin; a language opens up a window into another world -Mandarin opened up a new window for me.
The railway, like the military unit where I later worked, was a heavy area of ethnic discrimination. As Uyghurs, whether it was my parents or my siblings and other Uyghurs working on the railway, we faced various forms of discrimination almost every day. This discrimination came from teachers, classmates, neighbors, leaders and colleagues in our parents’ units; these seemingly trivial discriminations had a profound impact on my growth.
The most disgusting and boring discriminatory issue that accompanied me for half of my life was when I first appeared in class with seemingly innocent but obviously provocative questions that made teachers and classmates remember for a long time: Why don’t Uyghurs eat pork? Why do Uyghur names are so long? Why are Uyghurs so barbaric? At first, I patiently explained them but found out they already had their own answers. After I finished explaining to them, they would still come up with insulting fabricated stories to argue.
What’s worse is that some classmates deliberately put food containing pork on my desk or in my backpack and drawers. When I reported this to the teacher, he always casually said it was just children playing jokes on you. Then the teacher also joked about how good pork tasted and asked why didn’t I try it? Helpless as I was left with no choice but to solve it myself - by fighting back; most of the time I won but there were also times when students called their friends over to gang up on me leaving me beaten black and blue.
The more discrimination we encountered made me want to master Chinese better than ever before becoming an outstanding student at school. However, this became another reason for promoting discrimination; every time teachers criticized poor-performing students using frequent statements such as “Look at Yilixiati (my name), an ethnic minority person who performs better than all of you in all subjects; aren’t you ashamed?”
During ten years studying at Hami Railway School ,I witnessed firsthand how difficult life could be for my parents despite earning slightly higher wages compared to other Uighur workers on railways which allowed us a slightly better standard of living . They did the hardest work yet earned lowest wages while facing daily humiliation due to racial prejudice.
I remember one day when mother returned home crying after being insulted by Han people at her workplace selling tickets at small stations along railways . Commuting railway staff can travel free with their commuting certificate while others have to buy tickets . That day she met an extremely vulgar non-commuting worker who not only refused buying ticket but also insulted her verbally . My mother retorted him back then he jumped up wanting hit her physically calling her old ignorant uyghur woman who doesn’t understand anything etc .
Every time something like this happened ,my parents would tell me seriously: “Son,I hope you study hard Chinese language well ,master knowledge well,hopefully one day you can sit down equally with them ; unlike us living our whole lives being bullied.” Seeing all this happening around me,I knew what they expected from me wasn’t just mastering Chinese language skills or getting a job working on railways,but rather achieving equality between Han people &Uighurs!
Although at that time,I didn’t fully understand what equality meant according to parent’s expectations,but through personal experiences&commonly faced prejudices among fellow uighurs around,it dawned upon me that mastering Chinese language&modern knowledge is essential.I naively thought,the various forms of prejudice against uighurs were caused partly because older generation uighur folks couldn’t speak chinese fluently,and partly because ordinary han people working along railways were too ignorant & uncivilized.So if i studied hard,mastered knowledge,i could prove uighur people weren’t inferior compared to han people,&change their views towards us thus achieving equality .
I worked hard,determined not fall behind,became top student in class,&with excellent grades ranked within top ten throughout school,enabling admission into prestigious HaMi No2 High School followed by Dalian Institute Of Technology.
After graduating from university, I returned to my hometown to look for work. My father asked me if I would be willing to work on the railway. He said he could talk to his leader about it and my younger siblings also encouraged me, saying that railway jobs had high salaries and good benefits, and everyone was in Hami. However, I firmly refused and told them about the various discriminations I encountered during my ten years of schooling as well as the dirty, chaotic, and poor environment of the railways which had already made me tired of working there. No, I never wanted to go back to the railway.
However, fate played a joke on me when I was unfortunately assigned to Shihezi after graduation where I became a teacher in China’s colonial pioneer corps - Bingtuan’s capital city.
As a recent college graduate with an arrogant sense of superiority due to being one of the best students at that time who thought they could point out flaws in everything and make sweeping statements with ease; coming here as a teacher in Shihezi gave me this feeling like because my Chinese language skills were fluent coupled with modern knowledge meant that equality should be achievable through ability alone. But what happened instead was that compared with discrimination against non-Han ethnic groups such as Uyghurs by railways (which is already bad enough), Bingtuan’s discrimination against these groups can only be described as equally severe but more insidious and blatant.
During decades spent teaching here while dealing with school leaders and colleagues alike; most Han intellectuals’ prejudice towards Uyghurs or other non-Han ethnicities runs deep rooted within them along with their own brand of ignorant arrogance.
This kind of ignorance makes them feel entitled towards enlightening us or civilizing us; our language culture traditions beliefs are all backward according to them so their mission is assimilating us into “Chinese civilization” making us become just like Han people who speak Mandarin rather than Uyghur speakers!
I remember after countless heated debates between myself & Han colleagues over time; one old teacher named Wang said: “Mr Yiliyasiti! In the past we used say ‘Heaven fears not nor does Earth fear anything except for an old Uyghur speaking Mandarin’. Today however? We know you guys learn Chinese just so you can deal with us.” This statement has been repeated many times since then sometimes vented out angrily sometimes sighed helplessly but sometimes even cursed at full throttle fueled by hatred!
With hopes held high wanting mastery over Mandarin learning knowledge realizing dreams for equal footing alongside Han people- 10 years studying hard behind closed doors mastering Chinese yet ultimately discovering how uncomfortable angry & indignant it made both my Han superiors & colleagues feel even going so far as thinking any dissenting opinions or resistance from myself constituted rebellion deserving punishment!
Nevertheless despite all this hardship endured throughout East Turkestan fluency in Mandarin did not change my status nor fulfill wishes for equality among Han people yet through learning Mandarin gained much knowledge understanding deeper historical context regarding imperial China grasping vastness profundity contained within its culture meeting genuine friends among enlightened open-minded individuals who truly understand freedom & equality concepts! Most importantly though- mastering Mandarin became most powerful tool enabling pursuit toward equal rights freedom standing toe-to-toe versus those advocating unity under imperialist rule actually achieving true parity long ago! view all
Today, I will talk about how I chose to learn Chinese and how I learned it. Also, what was my purpose for learning Chinese. This can be considered as a summary of my experience in learning the language and my motivation and goals for doing so.
To be honest, learning Chinese was not my choice but rather my parents' decision. They forced me to learn it!
I have mentioned this briefly in some of my previous articles; originally born in Quruqhay Township in Yili (Xinjiang), where I grew up with my grandparents. Around 1970 when I started third grade at a Uyghur elementary school there suddenly came a time when my parents visited from Hami to see us on vacation. They wanted me to go back with them to Hami city for schooling.
Going to school in the city had great appeal for me as a child growing up in rural areas even though leaving behind grandparents who raised me made it difficult for me emotionally; however curiosity led me follow along with them away from beautiful mountain village Quruqhay Township filled with clear waters and fragrant fruits through several days of horse-drawn carriage rides followed by long-distance bus trips before finally arriving at Hami Railway Area.
Completely unexpected were rows upon rows of pale dilapidated railway flats highlighting poverty-stricken self-built small courtyard walls high or low unevenly distributed throughout area's dusty narrow roads pitted year-round emitting odors every crossroads having at least one or two open-air toilets which made lose interest completely towards cities - accurately speaking - disgust arose within myself.
Furthermore almost no Uyghurs lived around Hami Railway Area where we resided only two or three families were present; since unable speak Mandarin (Chinese) thus confined inside home feeling deceived by parents' actions wrote secretly letter asking grandparents come rescue immediately after approximately one or two months later they appeared unexpectedly taking week-long visit bringing freedom returning back home Quruqhay.
However, the good times didn't last long. My parents came again, bringing with them more new clothes, candies and biscuits as material temptations. They repeatedly urged me to learn Chinese and described a bright future of growing up in the city. They told me that if I learned Chinese, I could work on the railway in the future with high salary and job security. Although I didn't quite understand what high salary and job security meant, under my grandparents' persuasion, I knew that working on the railway was much better than farming in rural areas.
Under my parents' sugar-coated bullets and promises of a better future, I followed them to Hami once again. But this time, I persisted.
In autumn when school started, I entered Hami Railway Elementary School No. 4 not far from my home to begin learning Chinese language from scratch since at that time I did not know any Chinese words.
At first it was very difficult for me; besides arithmetic problems which were easy for me because they are universal across languages ,I couldn't understand anything else teachers said or communicate effectively with classmates except through gestures or body language . However,I persevered knowing that hard work pays off eventually . After several months of hard work ,I began to understand spoken Mandarin ; by second semester ,I had already made it into top ten students in class .
While studying Uyghur script at Quruhay Primary School back then there were no other books available except Mao's quotations but at Hami where we studied Mandarin there were many different kinds of books available . With mastery over Mandarin language ,I read extensively all sorts of books which further piqued my interest towards learning Mandarin; a language opens up a window into another world -Mandarin opened up a new window for me.
The railway, like the military unit where I later worked, was a heavy area of ethnic discrimination. As Uyghurs, whether it was my parents or my siblings and other Uyghurs working on the railway, we faced various forms of discrimination almost every day. This discrimination came from teachers, classmates, neighbors, leaders and colleagues in our parents’ units; these seemingly trivial discriminations had a profound impact on my growth.
The most disgusting and boring discriminatory issue that accompanied me for half of my life was when I first appeared in class with seemingly innocent but obviously provocative questions that made teachers and classmates remember for a long time: Why don’t Uyghurs eat pork? Why do Uyghur names are so long? Why are Uyghurs so barbaric? At first, I patiently explained them but found out they already had their own answers. After I finished explaining to them, they would still come up with insulting fabricated stories to argue.
What’s worse is that some classmates deliberately put food containing pork on my desk or in my backpack and drawers. When I reported this to the teacher, he always casually said it was just children playing jokes on you. Then the teacher also joked about how good pork tasted and asked why didn’t I try it? Helpless as I was left with no choice but to solve it myself - by fighting back; most of the time I won but there were also times when students called their friends over to gang up on me leaving me beaten black and blue.
The more discrimination we encountered made me want to master Chinese better than ever before becoming an outstanding student at school. However, this became another reason for promoting discrimination; every time teachers criticized poor-performing students using frequent statements such as “Look at Yilixiati (my name), an ethnic minority person who performs better than all of you in all subjects; aren’t you ashamed?”
During ten years studying at Hami Railway School ,I witnessed firsthand how difficult life could be for my parents despite earning slightly higher wages compared to other Uighur workers on railways which allowed us a slightly better standard of living . They did the hardest work yet earned lowest wages while facing daily humiliation due to racial prejudice.
I remember one day when mother returned home crying after being insulted by Han people at her workplace selling tickets at small stations along railways . Commuting railway staff can travel free with their commuting certificate while others have to buy tickets . That day she met an extremely vulgar non-commuting worker who not only refused buying ticket but also insulted her verbally . My mother retorted him back then he jumped up wanting hit her physically calling her old ignorant uyghur woman who doesn’t understand anything etc .
Every time something like this happened ,my parents would tell me seriously: “Son,I hope you study hard Chinese language well ,master knowledge well,hopefully one day you can sit down equally with them ; unlike us living our whole lives being bullied.” Seeing all this happening around me,I knew what they expected from me wasn’t just mastering Chinese language skills or getting a job working on railways,but rather achieving equality between Han people &Uighurs!
Although at that time,I didn’t fully understand what equality meant according to parent’s expectations,but through personal experiences&commonly faced prejudices among fellow uighurs around,it dawned upon me that mastering Chinese language&modern knowledge is essential.I naively thought,the various forms of prejudice against uighurs were caused partly because older generation uighur folks couldn’t speak chinese fluently,and partly because ordinary han people working along railways were too ignorant & uncivilized.So if i studied hard,mastered knowledge,i could prove uighur people weren’t inferior compared to han people,&change their views towards us thus achieving equality .
I worked hard,determined not fall behind,became top student in class,&with excellent grades ranked within top ten throughout school,enabling admission into prestigious HaMi No2 High School followed by Dalian Institute Of Technology.
After graduating from university, I returned to my hometown to look for work. My father asked me if I would be willing to work on the railway. He said he could talk to his leader about it and my younger siblings also encouraged me, saying that railway jobs had high salaries and good benefits, and everyone was in Hami. However, I firmly refused and told them about the various discriminations I encountered during my ten years of schooling as well as the dirty, chaotic, and poor environment of the railways which had already made me tired of working there. No, I never wanted to go back to the railway.
However, fate played a joke on me when I was unfortunately assigned to Shihezi after graduation where I became a teacher in China’s colonial pioneer corps - Bingtuan’s capital city.
As a recent college graduate with an arrogant sense of superiority due to being one of the best students at that time who thought they could point out flaws in everything and make sweeping statements with ease; coming here as a teacher in Shihezi gave me this feeling like because my Chinese language skills were fluent coupled with modern knowledge meant that equality should be achievable through ability alone. But what happened instead was that compared with discrimination against non-Han ethnic groups such as Uyghurs by railways (which is already bad enough), Bingtuan’s discrimination against these groups can only be described as equally severe but more insidious and blatant.
During decades spent teaching here while dealing with school leaders and colleagues alike; most Han intellectuals’ prejudice towards Uyghurs or other non-Han ethnicities runs deep rooted within them along with their own brand of ignorant arrogance.
This kind of ignorance makes them feel entitled towards enlightening us or civilizing us; our language culture traditions beliefs are all backward according to them so their mission is assimilating us into “Chinese civilization” making us become just like Han people who speak Mandarin rather than Uyghur speakers!
I remember after countless heated debates between myself & Han colleagues over time; one old teacher named Wang said: “Mr Yiliyasiti! In the past we used say ‘Heaven fears not nor does Earth fear anything except for an old Uyghur speaking Mandarin’. Today however? We know you guys learn Chinese just so you can deal with us.” This statement has been repeated many times since then sometimes vented out angrily sometimes sighed helplessly but sometimes even cursed at full throttle fueled by hatred!
With hopes held high wanting mastery over Mandarin learning knowledge realizing dreams for equal footing alongside Han people- 10 years studying hard behind closed doors mastering Chinese yet ultimately discovering how uncomfortable angry & indignant it made both my Han superiors & colleagues feel even going so far as thinking any dissenting opinions or resistance from myself constituted rebellion deserving punishment!
Nevertheless despite all this hardship endured throughout East Turkestan fluency in Mandarin did not change my status nor fulfill wishes for equality among Han people yet through learning Mandarin gained much knowledge understanding deeper historical context regarding imperial China grasping vastness profundity contained within its culture meeting genuine friends among enlightened open-minded individuals who truly understand freedom & equality concepts! Most importantly though- mastering Mandarin became most powerful tool enabling pursuit toward equal rights freedom standing toe-to-toe versus those advocating unity under imperialist rule actually achieving true parity long ago! view all
Many people often ask me, 'Your Chinese is so good, how did you learn it? Do you know Uyghur?' On the internet, there are also people who frequently ask me, 'Since you are so against China, why do you still study and use Chinese? Why not write in Uyghur?' Although I always smile and brush off these questions, especially the latter one keeps coming up. After a while, I feel that maybe I should give an answer.
Today, I will talk about how I chose to learn Chinese and how I learned it. Also, what was my purpose for learning Chinese. This can be considered as a summary of my experience in learning the language and my motivation and goals for doing so.
To be honest, learning Chinese was not my choice but rather my parents' decision. They forced me to learn it!
I have mentioned this briefly in some of my previous articles; originally born in Quruqhay Township in Yili (Xinjiang), where I grew up with my grandparents. Around 1970 when I started third grade at a Uyghur elementary school there suddenly came a time when my parents visited from Hami to see us on vacation. They wanted me to go back with them to Hami city for schooling.
Going to school in the city had great appeal for me as a child growing up in rural areas even though leaving behind grandparents who raised me made it difficult for me emotionally; however curiosity led me follow along with them away from beautiful mountain village Quruqhay Township filled with clear waters and fragrant fruits through several days of horse-drawn carriage rides followed by long-distance bus trips before finally arriving at Hami Railway Area.
Completely unexpected were rows upon rows of pale dilapidated railway flats highlighting poverty-stricken self-built small courtyard walls high or low unevenly distributed throughout area's dusty narrow roads pitted year-round emitting odors every crossroads having at least one or two open-air toilets which made lose interest completely towards cities - accurately speaking - disgust arose within myself.
Furthermore almost no Uyghurs lived around Hami Railway Area where we resided only two or three families were present; since unable speak Mandarin (Chinese) thus confined inside home feeling deceived by parents' actions wrote secretly letter asking grandparents come rescue immediately after approximately one or two months later they appeared unexpectedly taking week-long visit bringing freedom returning back home Quruqhay.
However, the good times didn't last long. My parents came again, bringing with them more new clothes, candies and biscuits as material temptations. They repeatedly urged me to learn Chinese and described a bright future of growing up in the city. They told me that if I learned Chinese, I could work on the railway in the future with high salary and job security. Although I didn't quite understand what high salary and job security meant, under my grandparents' persuasion, I knew that working on the railway was much better than farming in rural areas.
Under my parents' sugar-coated bullets and promises of a better future, I followed them to Hami once again. But this time, I persisted.
In autumn when school started, I entered Hami Railway Elementary School No. 4 not far from my home to begin learning Chinese language from scratch since at that time I did not know any Chinese words.
At first it was very difficult for me; besides arithmetic problems which were easy for me because they are universal across languages ,I couldn't understand anything else teachers said or communicate effectively with classmates except through gestures or body language . However,I persevered knowing that hard work pays off eventually . After several months of hard work ,I began to understand spoken Mandarin ; by second semester ,I had already made it into top ten students in class .
While studying Uyghur script at Quruhay Primary School back then there were no other books available except Mao's quotations but at Hami where we studied Mandarin there were many different kinds of books available . With mastery over Mandarin language ,I read extensively all sorts of books which further piqued my interest towards learning Mandarin; a language opens up a window into another world -Mandarin opened up a new window for me.
The railway, like the military unit where I later worked, was a heavy area of ethnic discrimination. As Uyghurs, whether it was my parents or my siblings and other Uyghurs working on the railway, we faced various forms of discrimination almost every day. This discrimination came from teachers, classmates, neighbors, leaders and colleagues in our parents’ units; these seemingly trivial discriminations had a profound impact on my growth.
The most disgusting and boring discriminatory issue that accompanied me for half of my life was when I first appeared in class with seemingly innocent but obviously provocative questions that made teachers and classmates remember for a long time: Why don’t Uyghurs eat pork? Why do Uyghur names are so long? Why are Uyghurs so barbaric? At first, I patiently explained them but found out they already had their own answers. After I finished explaining to them, they would still come up with insulting fabricated stories to argue.
What’s worse is that some classmates deliberately put food containing pork on my desk or in my backpack and drawers. When I reported this to the teacher, he always casually said it was just children playing jokes on you. Then the teacher also joked about how good pork tasted and asked why didn’t I try it? Helpless as I was left with no choice but to solve it myself - by fighting back; most of the time I won but there were also times when students called their friends over to gang up on me leaving me beaten black and blue.
The more discrimination we encountered made me want to master Chinese better than ever before becoming an outstanding student at school. However, this became another reason for promoting discrimination; every time teachers criticized poor-performing students using frequent statements such as “Look at Yilixiati (my name), an ethnic minority person who performs better than all of you in all subjects; aren’t you ashamed?”
During ten years studying at Hami Railway School ,I witnessed firsthand how difficult life could be for my parents despite earning slightly higher wages compared to other Uighur workers on railways which allowed us a slightly better standard of living . They did the hardest work yet earned lowest wages while facing daily humiliation due to racial prejudice.
I remember one day when mother returned home crying after being insulted by Han people at her workplace selling tickets at small stations along railways . Commuting railway staff can travel free with their commuting certificate while others have to buy tickets . That day she met an extremely vulgar non-commuting worker who not only refused buying ticket but also insulted her verbally . My mother retorted him back then he jumped up wanting hit her physically calling her old ignorant uyghur woman who doesn’t understand anything etc .
Every time something like this happened ,my parents would tell me seriously: “Son,I hope you study hard Chinese language well ,master knowledge well,hopefully one day you can sit down equally with them ; unlike us living our whole lives being bullied.” Seeing all this happening around me,I knew what they expected from me wasn’t just mastering Chinese language skills or getting a job working on railways,but rather achieving equality between Han people &Uighurs!
Although at that time,I didn’t fully understand what equality meant according to parent’s expectations,but through personal experiences&commonly faced prejudices among fellow uighurs around,it dawned upon me that mastering Chinese language&modern knowledge is essential.I naively thought,the various forms of prejudice against uighurs were caused partly because older generation uighur folks couldn’t speak chinese fluently,and partly because ordinary han people working along railways were too ignorant & uncivilized.So if i studied hard,mastered knowledge,i could prove uighur people weren’t inferior compared to han people,&change their views towards us thus achieving equality .
I worked hard,determined not fall behind,became top student in class,&with excellent grades ranked within top ten throughout school,enabling admission into prestigious HaMi No2 High School followed by Dalian Institute Of Technology.
After graduating from university, I returned to my hometown to look for work. My father asked me if I would be willing to work on the railway. He said he could talk to his leader about it and my younger siblings also encouraged me, saying that railway jobs had high salaries and good benefits, and everyone was in Hami. However, I firmly refused and told them about the various discriminations I encountered during my ten years of schooling as well as the dirty, chaotic, and poor environment of the railways which had already made me tired of working there. No, I never wanted to go back to the railway.
However, fate played a joke on me when I was unfortunately assigned to Shihezi after graduation where I became a teacher in China’s colonial pioneer corps - Bingtuan’s capital city.
As a recent college graduate with an arrogant sense of superiority due to being one of the best students at that time who thought they could point out flaws in everything and make sweeping statements with ease; coming here as a teacher in Shihezi gave me this feeling like because my Chinese language skills were fluent coupled with modern knowledge meant that equality should be achievable through ability alone. But what happened instead was that compared with discrimination against non-Han ethnic groups such as Uyghurs by railways (which is already bad enough), Bingtuan’s discrimination against these groups can only be described as equally severe but more insidious and blatant.
During decades spent teaching here while dealing with school leaders and colleagues alike; most Han intellectuals’ prejudice towards Uyghurs or other non-Han ethnicities runs deep rooted within them along with their own brand of ignorant arrogance.
This kind of ignorance makes them feel entitled towards enlightening us or civilizing us; our language culture traditions beliefs are all backward according to them so their mission is assimilating us into “Chinese civilization” making us become just like Han people who speak Mandarin rather than Uyghur speakers!
I remember after countless heated debates between myself & Han colleagues over time; one old teacher named Wang said: “Mr Yiliyasiti! In the past we used say ‘Heaven fears not nor does Earth fear anything except for an old Uyghur speaking Mandarin’. Today however? We know you guys learn Chinese just so you can deal with us.” This statement has been repeated many times since then sometimes vented out angrily sometimes sighed helplessly but sometimes even cursed at full throttle fueled by hatred!
With hopes held high wanting mastery over Mandarin learning knowledge realizing dreams for equal footing alongside Han people- 10 years studying hard behind closed doors mastering Chinese yet ultimately discovering how uncomfortable angry & indignant it made both my Han superiors & colleagues feel even going so far as thinking any dissenting opinions or resistance from myself constituted rebellion deserving punishment!
Nevertheless despite all this hardship endured throughout East Turkestan fluency in Mandarin did not change my status nor fulfill wishes for equality among Han people yet through learning Mandarin gained much knowledge understanding deeper historical context regarding imperial China grasping vastness profundity contained within its culture meeting genuine friends among enlightened open-minded individuals who truly understand freedom & equality concepts! Most importantly though- mastering Mandarin became most powerful tool enabling pursuit toward equal rights freedom standing toe-to-toe versus those advocating unity under imperialist rule actually achieving true parity long ago!
Today, I will talk about how I chose to learn Chinese and how I learned it. Also, what was my purpose for learning Chinese. This can be considered as a summary of my experience in learning the language and my motivation and goals for doing so.
To be honest, learning Chinese was not my choice but rather my parents' decision. They forced me to learn it!
I have mentioned this briefly in some of my previous articles; originally born in Quruqhay Township in Yili (Xinjiang), where I grew up with my grandparents. Around 1970 when I started third grade at a Uyghur elementary school there suddenly came a time when my parents visited from Hami to see us on vacation. They wanted me to go back with them to Hami city for schooling.
Going to school in the city had great appeal for me as a child growing up in rural areas even though leaving behind grandparents who raised me made it difficult for me emotionally; however curiosity led me follow along with them away from beautiful mountain village Quruqhay Township filled with clear waters and fragrant fruits through several days of horse-drawn carriage rides followed by long-distance bus trips before finally arriving at Hami Railway Area.
Completely unexpected were rows upon rows of pale dilapidated railway flats highlighting poverty-stricken self-built small courtyard walls high or low unevenly distributed throughout area's dusty narrow roads pitted year-round emitting odors every crossroads having at least one or two open-air toilets which made lose interest completely towards cities - accurately speaking - disgust arose within myself.
Furthermore almost no Uyghurs lived around Hami Railway Area where we resided only two or three families were present; since unable speak Mandarin (Chinese) thus confined inside home feeling deceived by parents' actions wrote secretly letter asking grandparents come rescue immediately after approximately one or two months later they appeared unexpectedly taking week-long visit bringing freedom returning back home Quruqhay.
However, the good times didn't last long. My parents came again, bringing with them more new clothes, candies and biscuits as material temptations. They repeatedly urged me to learn Chinese and described a bright future of growing up in the city. They told me that if I learned Chinese, I could work on the railway in the future with high salary and job security. Although I didn't quite understand what high salary and job security meant, under my grandparents' persuasion, I knew that working on the railway was much better than farming in rural areas.
Under my parents' sugar-coated bullets and promises of a better future, I followed them to Hami once again. But this time, I persisted.
In autumn when school started, I entered Hami Railway Elementary School No. 4 not far from my home to begin learning Chinese language from scratch since at that time I did not know any Chinese words.
At first it was very difficult for me; besides arithmetic problems which were easy for me because they are universal across languages ,I couldn't understand anything else teachers said or communicate effectively with classmates except through gestures or body language . However,I persevered knowing that hard work pays off eventually . After several months of hard work ,I began to understand spoken Mandarin ; by second semester ,I had already made it into top ten students in class .
While studying Uyghur script at Quruhay Primary School back then there were no other books available except Mao's quotations but at Hami where we studied Mandarin there were many different kinds of books available . With mastery over Mandarin language ,I read extensively all sorts of books which further piqued my interest towards learning Mandarin; a language opens up a window into another world -Mandarin opened up a new window for me.
The railway, like the military unit where I later worked, was a heavy area of ethnic discrimination. As Uyghurs, whether it was my parents or my siblings and other Uyghurs working on the railway, we faced various forms of discrimination almost every day. This discrimination came from teachers, classmates, neighbors, leaders and colleagues in our parents’ units; these seemingly trivial discriminations had a profound impact on my growth.
The most disgusting and boring discriminatory issue that accompanied me for half of my life was when I first appeared in class with seemingly innocent but obviously provocative questions that made teachers and classmates remember for a long time: Why don’t Uyghurs eat pork? Why do Uyghur names are so long? Why are Uyghurs so barbaric? At first, I patiently explained them but found out they already had their own answers. After I finished explaining to them, they would still come up with insulting fabricated stories to argue.
What’s worse is that some classmates deliberately put food containing pork on my desk or in my backpack and drawers. When I reported this to the teacher, he always casually said it was just children playing jokes on you. Then the teacher also joked about how good pork tasted and asked why didn’t I try it? Helpless as I was left with no choice but to solve it myself - by fighting back; most of the time I won but there were also times when students called their friends over to gang up on me leaving me beaten black and blue.
The more discrimination we encountered made me want to master Chinese better than ever before becoming an outstanding student at school. However, this became another reason for promoting discrimination; every time teachers criticized poor-performing students using frequent statements such as “Look at Yilixiati (my name), an ethnic minority person who performs better than all of you in all subjects; aren’t you ashamed?”
During ten years studying at Hami Railway School ,I witnessed firsthand how difficult life could be for my parents despite earning slightly higher wages compared to other Uighur workers on railways which allowed us a slightly better standard of living . They did the hardest work yet earned lowest wages while facing daily humiliation due to racial prejudice.
I remember one day when mother returned home crying after being insulted by Han people at her workplace selling tickets at small stations along railways . Commuting railway staff can travel free with their commuting certificate while others have to buy tickets . That day she met an extremely vulgar non-commuting worker who not only refused buying ticket but also insulted her verbally . My mother retorted him back then he jumped up wanting hit her physically calling her old ignorant uyghur woman who doesn’t understand anything etc .
Every time something like this happened ,my parents would tell me seriously: “Son,I hope you study hard Chinese language well ,master knowledge well,hopefully one day you can sit down equally with them ; unlike us living our whole lives being bullied.” Seeing all this happening around me,I knew what they expected from me wasn’t just mastering Chinese language skills or getting a job working on railways,but rather achieving equality between Han people &Uighurs!
Although at that time,I didn’t fully understand what equality meant according to parent’s expectations,but through personal experiences&commonly faced prejudices among fellow uighurs around,it dawned upon me that mastering Chinese language&modern knowledge is essential.I naively thought,the various forms of prejudice against uighurs were caused partly because older generation uighur folks couldn’t speak chinese fluently,and partly because ordinary han people working along railways were too ignorant & uncivilized.So if i studied hard,mastered knowledge,i could prove uighur people weren’t inferior compared to han people,&change their views towards us thus achieving equality .
I worked hard,determined not fall behind,became top student in class,&with excellent grades ranked within top ten throughout school,enabling admission into prestigious HaMi No2 High School followed by Dalian Institute Of Technology.
After graduating from university, I returned to my hometown to look for work. My father asked me if I would be willing to work on the railway. He said he could talk to his leader about it and my younger siblings also encouraged me, saying that railway jobs had high salaries and good benefits, and everyone was in Hami. However, I firmly refused and told them about the various discriminations I encountered during my ten years of schooling as well as the dirty, chaotic, and poor environment of the railways which had already made me tired of working there. No, I never wanted to go back to the railway.
However, fate played a joke on me when I was unfortunately assigned to Shihezi after graduation where I became a teacher in China’s colonial pioneer corps - Bingtuan’s capital city.
As a recent college graduate with an arrogant sense of superiority due to being one of the best students at that time who thought they could point out flaws in everything and make sweeping statements with ease; coming here as a teacher in Shihezi gave me this feeling like because my Chinese language skills were fluent coupled with modern knowledge meant that equality should be achievable through ability alone. But what happened instead was that compared with discrimination against non-Han ethnic groups such as Uyghurs by railways (which is already bad enough), Bingtuan’s discrimination against these groups can only be described as equally severe but more insidious and blatant.
During decades spent teaching here while dealing with school leaders and colleagues alike; most Han intellectuals’ prejudice towards Uyghurs or other non-Han ethnicities runs deep rooted within them along with their own brand of ignorant arrogance.
This kind of ignorance makes them feel entitled towards enlightening us or civilizing us; our language culture traditions beliefs are all backward according to them so their mission is assimilating us into “Chinese civilization” making us become just like Han people who speak Mandarin rather than Uyghur speakers!
I remember after countless heated debates between myself & Han colleagues over time; one old teacher named Wang said: “Mr Yiliyasiti! In the past we used say ‘Heaven fears not nor does Earth fear anything except for an old Uyghur speaking Mandarin’. Today however? We know you guys learn Chinese just so you can deal with us.” This statement has been repeated many times since then sometimes vented out angrily sometimes sighed helplessly but sometimes even cursed at full throttle fueled by hatred!
With hopes held high wanting mastery over Mandarin learning knowledge realizing dreams for equal footing alongside Han people- 10 years studying hard behind closed doors mastering Chinese yet ultimately discovering how uncomfortable angry & indignant it made both my Han superiors & colleagues feel even going so far as thinking any dissenting opinions or resistance from myself constituted rebellion deserving punishment!
Nevertheless despite all this hardship endured throughout East Turkestan fluency in Mandarin did not change my status nor fulfill wishes for equality among Han people yet through learning Mandarin gained much knowledge understanding deeper historical context regarding imperial China grasping vastness profundity contained within its culture meeting genuine friends among enlightened open-minded individuals who truly understand freedom & equality concepts! Most importantly though- mastering Mandarin became most powerful tool enabling pursuit toward equal rights freedom standing toe-to-toe versus those advocating unity under imperialist rule actually achieving true parity long ago!
What happened Nov 24 in Urumqi, two Uyghur girls telling from the beginning of the lockdown, what difficulties they were in and how that fire burned lives in Urumqi.
Articles • leo posted the article • 0 comments • 1056 views • 2022-11-26 23:28
What happened Nov 24 in Urumqi, two Uyghur girls telling from the beginning of the lockdown, what difficulties they were in and how that fire burned lives in Urumqi.
Click and watch their voice:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw ... %3D12
They couldn’t escape because their door is locked as required by the zero Covid policy of China.
view all
Click and watch their voice:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw ... %3D12
They couldn’t escape because their door is locked as required by the zero Covid policy of China.
view all
What happened Nov 24 in Urumqi, two Uyghur girls telling from the beginning of the lockdown, what difficulties they were in and how that fire burned lives in Urumqi.
Click and watch their voice:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw ... %3D12
They couldn’t escape because their door is locked as required by the zero Covid policy of China.
Click and watch their voice:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw ... %3D12
They couldn’t escape because their door is locked as required by the zero Covid policy of China.
Protests erupted in front of the Urumqi city government building, which has been in lockdown for 100 days, after a fire killed 10 Uyghurs
Articles • leo posted the article • 0 comments • 812 views • 2022-11-26 23:23
Protests erupted in front of the Urumqi city government building, which has been in lockdown for 100 days, after a fire killed 10 Uyghurs. Voices can be heard chanting, "open up" (end lockdown)
Click and watch the video:
Your browser does not support the video tag. view all
Click and watch the video:
Your browser does not support the video tag. view all
Protests erupted in front of the Urumqi city government building, which has been in lockdown for 100 days, after a fire killed 10 Uyghurs. Voices can be heard chanting, "open up" (end lockdown)
Click and watch the video:
Click and watch the video:
The Han-Chinese citizens are protesting the CCP regime, while over 5 Uyghurs died in this fire disaster.
News • leo posted the article • 0 comments • 854 views • 2022-11-26 22:05
The Han-Chinese citizens are protesting the CCP regime, while over 5 Uyghurs died in this fire disaster. When people talking, Uyghurs are disappearing, when people protest on the streets, Uyghurs are still being locked in concentration camps.
click and watch the video.
Your browser does not support the video tag. view all
click and watch the video.
Your browser does not support the video tag. view all
The Han-Chinese citizens are protesting the CCP regime, while over 5 Uyghurs died in this fire disaster. When people talking, Uyghurs are disappearing, when people protest on the streets, Uyghurs are still being locked in concentration camps.
click and watch the video.
click and watch the video.
Uyghurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, and HongKongers held a joint protest in front of the White House in Washington to protest the repressive policies of the China's government.
News • yakitoriPB posted the article • 0 comments • 959 views • 2022-10-02 23:33
On China's October 1st National Day, Uygurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, and HongKongers in the United States held a joint protest in front of the White House in Washington to protest the repressive policies of the China's government.
view all
view all
On China's October 1st National Day, Uygurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, and HongKongers in the United States held a joint protest in front of the White House in Washington to protest the repressive policies of the China's government.
China is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs | uyghur muslim genocide
News • Justice Brown posted the article • 0 comments • 908 views • 2022-09-11 11:54
Uyghur's vocie: My wife & 4-days old child are dying, don’t know which disease they got, the hospital kicked us out, local authorities didn’t accept our visit. We could find no one to help. Don’t know what to do.
00:00 start
00:10 Uyghur's children haven’t eaten in 3 days as there is no food.
00:23 China’s locking up Uyghurs in their homes and leaving them to starve under the pretext of “Covid lockdowns.”
02:24 China locked down Uyghur houses and Uyghur people asking for food 02:29 Dozens of Uyghurs “protested” against starvation
03:02 Chinese Communist Party is now using "Covid" as a tool to eradicate the Uyghurs
03:29 One Uyghur girl wrote a poem for the death of her sister
05:43 Uyghur are starving to death in China’s zero covid policy
06:02 how the quarantine works under China's 'Zero Covid' policy
06:10 Uyghurs are taken to temporary tents, Han Chinese are taken to hotels
06:27 Hospital kicked Uyghurs out and oneUyghur woman & 4-days old child are dying 07:05 china is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs 07:50 end
view all
Uyghur's vocie: My wife & 4-days old child are dying, don’t know which disease they got, the hospital kicked us out, local authorities didn’t accept our visit. We could find no one to help. Don’t know what to do.
00:00 start
00:10 Uyghur's children haven’t eaten in 3 days as there is no food.
00:23 China’s locking up Uyghurs in their homes and leaving them to starve under the pretext of “Covid lockdowns.”
02:24 China locked down Uyghur houses and Uyghur people asking for food 02:29 Dozens of Uyghurs “protested” against starvation
03:02 Chinese Communist Party is now using "Covid" as a tool to eradicate the Uyghurs
03:29 One Uyghur girl wrote a poem for the death of her sister
05:43 Uyghur are starving to death in China’s zero covid policy
06:02 how the quarantine works under China's 'Zero Covid' policy
06:10 Uyghurs are taken to temporary tents, Han Chinese are taken to hotels
06:27 Hospital kicked Uyghurs out and oneUyghur woman & 4-days old child are dying 07:05 china is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs 07:50 end
China is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs
News • Justice Brown posted the article • 0 comments • 878 views • 2022-09-11 10:12
China is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs. Uyghurs r about to die.They have high fever and are starved, but there are no food or medicine during the lockdown. Chinese Communist Party is now using "Covid" as a tool to eradicate the Uyghurs.
view all
view all
China is committing to starvation genocide on Uyghurs. Uyghurs r about to die.They have high fever and are starved, but there are no food or medicine during the lockdown. Chinese Communist Party is now using "Covid" as a tool to eradicate the Uyghurs.
Uyghur genocide camps | Roziqari Dawut, 27, the so-called reason of his imprisonment was having complex social relations。
Uyghur Genocide • Edikan posted the article • 0 comments • 964 views • 2022-09-05 00:16
Innocent Uyghur man was sentenced.Roziqari Dawut, 27, the so-called reason of his imprisonment was having complex social relations, 7 members of the family were detained and gathering a crowd to disturb social order. Where is he? Was he killed?
view all
view all
Innocent Uyghur man was sentenced.Roziqari Dawut, 27, the so-called reason of his imprisonment was having complex social relations, 7 members of the family were detained and gathering a crowd to disturb social order. Where is he? Was he killed?
Testimony from Uyghurs in China, Abdurehim Turdi died in Uyghur concentration camps.
Uyghur Genocide • Edikan posted the article • 1 comments • 1014 views • 2022-09-04 23:51
Testimony from Uyghurs in China, Abdurehim Turdi died in Konasheher country. His name was mentioned in Xinjiang Police files which includes 23 thousand detainees personal information. The vide said he died there, but there's no any further info, when we're talking, people are dying in Uyghur concentration camps.
view all
view all
Testimony from Uyghurs in China, Abdurehim Turdi died in Konasheher country. His name was mentioned in Xinjiang Police files which includes 23 thousand detainees personal information. The vide said he died there, but there's no any further info, when we're talking, people are dying in Uyghur concentration camps.
Uyghurs prisoners in Xinjiang are forced to speak in Mandarin and perform obvious displays of subservience to their Chinese guards in monthly video calls with relatives
Articles • mykhan posted the article • 0 comments • 846 views • 2022-07-28 00:19
Uyghurs prisoners in Xinjiang are forced to speak in Mandarin and perform obvious displays of subservience to their Chinese guards in monthly video calls with relatives, Uyghurs living in exile say.
A Uyghur now living in Europe told RFA that her siblings in Sanji Prison in the town of Sanji (in Chinese, Changji) were recently allowed to meet online with other relatives in Aksu (Akesu). Though neither the jailed Uyghurs nor their family members could speak Chinese well, authorities made them communicate in Mandarin for the entire meeting.
“They barely managed to speak in Chinese, according to my relatives who met them onscreen,” the source said. “This is not just an isolated incident.”
Chinese authorities have banned the use of the Uyghur language in schools and government complexes as part of their efforts to diminish the culture and traditions of the largely Muslim community.
But Uyghur families still speak their native tongue inside their homes. The prohibition from doing so on the monthly virtual visits adds a level of frustration for family members who are already anxious about their loved ones’ well-being.
Another Uyghur exile living in Turkey told RFA that her nephew, who was serving a sentence in a prison in Urumqi (Wulumuqi), was forced to speak Chinese to his mother and grandmother, though the latter had to rely on another relative to translate because she did not know Mandarin.
“They allowed them to meet onscreen once every few months for only three minutes,” the source said. “My mother was there once to meet onscreen with my nephew. My mother was very uncomfortable hearing my nephew speaking to them in Chinese. My nephew’s wife fainted at the time, hearing him speak only in Chinese.
“On-screen, my nephew had to bow while walking backward saying goodbye in traditional Chinese fashion,” she added. “He also had kowtow to the Chinese police for giving him the chance to see his relatives onscreen.”
Tahir Mutällip Qahiri, a Uyghur Muslim lecturer in the Uyghur language and literature at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said he noticed a difference in the way his detained father interacted with him during a video call.
His father, well-known Uyghur scholar and activist Mutallib Siddiq Qahiri, used to work at Kashgar University and wrote and edited more than 20 books on Uyghur and Arabic culture until he was arrested in 2018 and charged with “incitement to ethnic hatred,” according to a September 2020 article in the Byline Times. In early 2020, authorities sentenced him to 30 months in prison with four years of probation.
Tahir said he was able to see his father after he was released from detention, but that the man “was not as free as the Uyghur prisoners who recently had spoken with their relatives onscreen.”
Although the two spoke Uyghur to one another, Tahir said he believed his father was under surveillance by authorities because he told his son to remain silent and to defend the Chinese state.
“In March 2019, I was able to talk to my father onscreen twice for a very short time, and what I sensed from those virtual interactions was that he had no freedom at all in his speech,” he said. “I didn’t see any Chinese police present when I spoke to him onscreen, but what I knew was all he said was in a Chinese framework, even though it was uttered in the Uyghur language.
“From the context of his speech and his body language, I was able to conclude that even though he didn’t speak in Chinese, it was all Chinese propaganda,” he added. “I sensed a great fear he had for the Chinese authorities.”
Tahir said that compared to the time he first spoke to his father when he was released from detention to house arrest, the current situation of Uyghur detainees appears to have gotten worse. Noting that authorities’ efforts to eradicate the Uyghur language is part of the genocide China has been committing against the ethnic and religious minority group in recent years.
'Culturally savage'
At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities, though Beijing claimed they were “vocation training centers,” which are now all closed.
Credible accounts of the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, severe human rights abuses and efforts to obliterate Uyghur culture and religion have prompted the United States and some Western legislatures to declare a genocide and crimes against humanity in the region.
Forcing Uyghur prisoners to speak Mandarin and to bow in an outdated Chinese fashion is “culturally savage and politically extremist,” Tahir said.
In an audio recording provided to RFA by a Uyghur living in the U.S., a Uyghur woman living in Urumqi used an interpreter to speak in Chinese to her son, who is in a prison in Xinjiang.
The woman then cries as her son in Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is forced to kowtow to Chinese police officers during his online meeting with her.
“Her son is only 25 or 26, and now he’s forced to speak in Chinese and bow to the Chinese while walking backward onscreen,” said the Uyghur in exile.
According to the audio, the son was on his knees when he bowed his head in gratitude to the Chinese police, with his forehead almost touching the floor, his mother told the Uyghur in exile.
“My son’s forehead was almost on the floor when he bowed to the police,” the mother told her Uyghur relative in exile. “I hope my defenseless son will soon see sunshine [and] will meet his loving relatives in freedom.”
Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in the U.S. and vice chairman of the executive committee of the World Uyghur Congress, told RFA that he also received a video of a Uyghur prisoner speaking in Chinese with a relative during a videoconference, though the person did not understand Mandarin.
Speaking in a mother tongue is a basic necessity and right of the people, though Chinese authorities have stripped that right away from the Uyghurs, he said.
Police officers take the relatives of Uyghur prisoners to government complexes each month to see their imprisoned relatives over video. Both the prisoners and their relatives meet under police surveillance, Uyghur sources and a police officer involved in monitoring the visits told RFA.
A police officer who is in charge of such surveillance in Kashgar (Kashi) said on two scheduled days each month he takes the family members of Uyghur prisoners to a neighborhood committee complex where they can virtually meet with the detainees.
“Twice a month, we allow them to meet onscreen,” he said. “We take the relatives to the neighborhood community complex. Some months they were not allowed to meet because of COVID-19 prevention policy.”
Relatives often have to wait one to two hours for their turn. The calls usually last about two minutes and are conducted in Chinese, said the officer, who did not give his name so as to speak freely.
Police officers do not allow detainees’ relatives to say anything except to express their well-being and to thank the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. view all
A Uyghur now living in Europe told RFA that her siblings in Sanji Prison in the town of Sanji (in Chinese, Changji) were recently allowed to meet online with other relatives in Aksu (Akesu). Though neither the jailed Uyghurs nor their family members could speak Chinese well, authorities made them communicate in Mandarin for the entire meeting.
“They barely managed to speak in Chinese, according to my relatives who met them onscreen,” the source said. “This is not just an isolated incident.”
Chinese authorities have banned the use of the Uyghur language in schools and government complexes as part of their efforts to diminish the culture and traditions of the largely Muslim community.
But Uyghur families still speak their native tongue inside their homes. The prohibition from doing so on the monthly virtual visits adds a level of frustration for family members who are already anxious about their loved ones’ well-being.
Another Uyghur exile living in Turkey told RFA that her nephew, who was serving a sentence in a prison in Urumqi (Wulumuqi), was forced to speak Chinese to his mother and grandmother, though the latter had to rely on another relative to translate because she did not know Mandarin.
“They allowed them to meet onscreen once every few months for only three minutes,” the source said. “My mother was there once to meet onscreen with my nephew. My mother was very uncomfortable hearing my nephew speaking to them in Chinese. My nephew’s wife fainted at the time, hearing him speak only in Chinese.
“On-screen, my nephew had to bow while walking backward saying goodbye in traditional Chinese fashion,” she added. “He also had kowtow to the Chinese police for giving him the chance to see his relatives onscreen.”
Tahir Mutällip Qahiri, a Uyghur Muslim lecturer in the Uyghur language and literature at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said he noticed a difference in the way his detained father interacted with him during a video call.
His father, well-known Uyghur scholar and activist Mutallib Siddiq Qahiri, used to work at Kashgar University and wrote and edited more than 20 books on Uyghur and Arabic culture until he was arrested in 2018 and charged with “incitement to ethnic hatred,” according to a September 2020 article in the Byline Times. In early 2020, authorities sentenced him to 30 months in prison with four years of probation.
Tahir said he was able to see his father after he was released from detention, but that the man “was not as free as the Uyghur prisoners who recently had spoken with their relatives onscreen.”
Although the two spoke Uyghur to one another, Tahir said he believed his father was under surveillance by authorities because he told his son to remain silent and to defend the Chinese state.
“In March 2019, I was able to talk to my father onscreen twice for a very short time, and what I sensed from those virtual interactions was that he had no freedom at all in his speech,” he said. “I didn’t see any Chinese police present when I spoke to him onscreen, but what I knew was all he said was in a Chinese framework, even though it was uttered in the Uyghur language.
“From the context of his speech and his body language, I was able to conclude that even though he didn’t speak in Chinese, it was all Chinese propaganda,” he added. “I sensed a great fear he had for the Chinese authorities.”
Tahir said that compared to the time he first spoke to his father when he was released from detention to house arrest, the current situation of Uyghur detainees appears to have gotten worse. Noting that authorities’ efforts to eradicate the Uyghur language is part of the genocide China has been committing against the ethnic and religious minority group in recent years.
'Culturally savage'
At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities, though Beijing claimed they were “vocation training centers,” which are now all closed.
Credible accounts of the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, severe human rights abuses and efforts to obliterate Uyghur culture and religion have prompted the United States and some Western legislatures to declare a genocide and crimes against humanity in the region.
Forcing Uyghur prisoners to speak Mandarin and to bow in an outdated Chinese fashion is “culturally savage and politically extremist,” Tahir said.
In an audio recording provided to RFA by a Uyghur living in the U.S., a Uyghur woman living in Urumqi used an interpreter to speak in Chinese to her son, who is in a prison in Xinjiang.
The woman then cries as her son in Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is forced to kowtow to Chinese police officers during his online meeting with her.
“Her son is only 25 or 26, and now he’s forced to speak in Chinese and bow to the Chinese while walking backward onscreen,” said the Uyghur in exile.
According to the audio, the son was on his knees when he bowed his head in gratitude to the Chinese police, with his forehead almost touching the floor, his mother told the Uyghur in exile.
“My son’s forehead was almost on the floor when he bowed to the police,” the mother told her Uyghur relative in exile. “I hope my defenseless son will soon see sunshine [and] will meet his loving relatives in freedom.”
Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in the U.S. and vice chairman of the executive committee of the World Uyghur Congress, told RFA that he also received a video of a Uyghur prisoner speaking in Chinese with a relative during a videoconference, though the person did not understand Mandarin.
Speaking in a mother tongue is a basic necessity and right of the people, though Chinese authorities have stripped that right away from the Uyghurs, he said.
Police officers take the relatives of Uyghur prisoners to government complexes each month to see their imprisoned relatives over video. Both the prisoners and their relatives meet under police surveillance, Uyghur sources and a police officer involved in monitoring the visits told RFA.
A police officer who is in charge of such surveillance in Kashgar (Kashi) said on two scheduled days each month he takes the family members of Uyghur prisoners to a neighborhood committee complex where they can virtually meet with the detainees.
“Twice a month, we allow them to meet onscreen,” he said. “We take the relatives to the neighborhood community complex. Some months they were not allowed to meet because of COVID-19 prevention policy.”
Relatives often have to wait one to two hours for their turn. The calls usually last about two minutes and are conducted in Chinese, said the officer, who did not give his name so as to speak freely.
Police officers do not allow detainees’ relatives to say anything except to express their well-being and to thank the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. view all
Uyghurs prisoners in Xinjiang are forced to speak in Mandarin and perform obvious displays of subservience to their Chinese guards in monthly video calls with relatives, Uyghurs living in exile say.
A Uyghur now living in Europe told RFA that her siblings in Sanji Prison in the town of Sanji (in Chinese, Changji) were recently allowed to meet online with other relatives in Aksu (Akesu). Though neither the jailed Uyghurs nor their family members could speak Chinese well, authorities made them communicate in Mandarin for the entire meeting.
“They barely managed to speak in Chinese, according to my relatives who met them onscreen,” the source said. “This is not just an isolated incident.”
Chinese authorities have banned the use of the Uyghur language in schools and government complexes as part of their efforts to diminish the culture and traditions of the largely Muslim community.
But Uyghur families still speak their native tongue inside their homes. The prohibition from doing so on the monthly virtual visits adds a level of frustration for family members who are already anxious about their loved ones’ well-being.
Another Uyghur exile living in Turkey told RFA that her nephew, who was serving a sentence in a prison in Urumqi (Wulumuqi), was forced to speak Chinese to his mother and grandmother, though the latter had to rely on another relative to translate because she did not know Mandarin.
“They allowed them to meet onscreen once every few months for only three minutes,” the source said. “My mother was there once to meet onscreen with my nephew. My mother was very uncomfortable hearing my nephew speaking to them in Chinese. My nephew’s wife fainted at the time, hearing him speak only in Chinese.
“On-screen, my nephew had to bow while walking backward saying goodbye in traditional Chinese fashion,” she added. “He also had kowtow to the Chinese police for giving him the chance to see his relatives onscreen.”
Tahir Mutällip Qahiri, a Uyghur Muslim lecturer in the Uyghur language and literature at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said he noticed a difference in the way his detained father interacted with him during a video call.
His father, well-known Uyghur scholar and activist Mutallib Siddiq Qahiri, used to work at Kashgar University and wrote and edited more than 20 books on Uyghur and Arabic culture until he was arrested in 2018 and charged with “incitement to ethnic hatred,” according to a September 2020 article in the Byline Times. In early 2020, authorities sentenced him to 30 months in prison with four years of probation.
Tahir said he was able to see his father after he was released from detention, but that the man “was not as free as the Uyghur prisoners who recently had spoken with their relatives onscreen.”
Although the two spoke Uyghur to one another, Tahir said he believed his father was under surveillance by authorities because he told his son to remain silent and to defend the Chinese state.
“In March 2019, I was able to talk to my father onscreen twice for a very short time, and what I sensed from those virtual interactions was that he had no freedom at all in his speech,” he said. “I didn’t see any Chinese police present when I spoke to him onscreen, but what I knew was all he said was in a Chinese framework, even though it was uttered in the Uyghur language.
“From the context of his speech and his body language, I was able to conclude that even though he didn’t speak in Chinese, it was all Chinese propaganda,” he added. “I sensed a great fear he had for the Chinese authorities.”
Tahir said that compared to the time he first spoke to his father when he was released from detention to house arrest, the current situation of Uyghur detainees appears to have gotten worse. Noting that authorities’ efforts to eradicate the Uyghur language is part of the genocide China has been committing against the ethnic and religious minority group in recent years.
'Culturally savage'
At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities, though Beijing claimed they were “vocation training centers,” which are now all closed.
Credible accounts of the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, severe human rights abuses and efforts to obliterate Uyghur culture and religion have prompted the United States and some Western legislatures to declare a genocide and crimes against humanity in the region.
Forcing Uyghur prisoners to speak Mandarin and to bow in an outdated Chinese fashion is “culturally savage and politically extremist,” Tahir said.
In an audio recording provided to RFA by a Uyghur living in the U.S., a Uyghur woman living in Urumqi used an interpreter to speak in Chinese to her son, who is in a prison in Xinjiang.
The woman then cries as her son in Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is forced to kowtow to Chinese police officers during his online meeting with her.
“Her son is only 25 or 26, and now he’s forced to speak in Chinese and bow to the Chinese while walking backward onscreen,” said the Uyghur in exile.
According to the audio, the son was on his knees when he bowed his head in gratitude to the Chinese police, with his forehead almost touching the floor, his mother told the Uyghur in exile.
“My son’s forehead was almost on the floor when he bowed to the police,” the mother told her Uyghur relative in exile. “I hope my defenseless son will soon see sunshine [and] will meet his loving relatives in freedom.”
Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in the U.S. and vice chairman of the executive committee of the World Uyghur Congress, told RFA that he also received a video of a Uyghur prisoner speaking in Chinese with a relative during a videoconference, though the person did not understand Mandarin.
Speaking in a mother tongue is a basic necessity and right of the people, though Chinese authorities have stripped that right away from the Uyghurs, he said.
Police officers take the relatives of Uyghur prisoners to government complexes each month to see their imprisoned relatives over video. Both the prisoners and their relatives meet under police surveillance, Uyghur sources and a police officer involved in monitoring the visits told RFA.
A police officer who is in charge of such surveillance in Kashgar (Kashi) said on two scheduled days each month he takes the family members of Uyghur prisoners to a neighborhood committee complex where they can virtually meet with the detainees.
“Twice a month, we allow them to meet onscreen,” he said. “We take the relatives to the neighborhood community complex. Some months they were not allowed to meet because of COVID-19 prevention policy.”
Relatives often have to wait one to two hours for their turn. The calls usually last about two minutes and are conducted in Chinese, said the officer, who did not give his name so as to speak freely.
Police officers do not allow detainees’ relatives to say anything except to express their well-being and to thank the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
A Uyghur now living in Europe told RFA that her siblings in Sanji Prison in the town of Sanji (in Chinese, Changji) were recently allowed to meet online with other relatives in Aksu (Akesu). Though neither the jailed Uyghurs nor their family members could speak Chinese well, authorities made them communicate in Mandarin for the entire meeting.
“They barely managed to speak in Chinese, according to my relatives who met them onscreen,” the source said. “This is not just an isolated incident.”
Chinese authorities have banned the use of the Uyghur language in schools and government complexes as part of their efforts to diminish the culture and traditions of the largely Muslim community.
But Uyghur families still speak their native tongue inside their homes. The prohibition from doing so on the monthly virtual visits adds a level of frustration for family members who are already anxious about their loved ones’ well-being.
Another Uyghur exile living in Turkey told RFA that her nephew, who was serving a sentence in a prison in Urumqi (Wulumuqi), was forced to speak Chinese to his mother and grandmother, though the latter had to rely on another relative to translate because she did not know Mandarin.
“They allowed them to meet onscreen once every few months for only three minutes,” the source said. “My mother was there once to meet onscreen with my nephew. My mother was very uncomfortable hearing my nephew speaking to them in Chinese. My nephew’s wife fainted at the time, hearing him speak only in Chinese.
“On-screen, my nephew had to bow while walking backward saying goodbye in traditional Chinese fashion,” she added. “He also had kowtow to the Chinese police for giving him the chance to see his relatives onscreen.”
Tahir Mutällip Qahiri, a Uyghur Muslim lecturer in the Uyghur language and literature at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said he noticed a difference in the way his detained father interacted with him during a video call.
His father, well-known Uyghur scholar and activist Mutallib Siddiq Qahiri, used to work at Kashgar University and wrote and edited more than 20 books on Uyghur and Arabic culture until he was arrested in 2018 and charged with “incitement to ethnic hatred,” according to a September 2020 article in the Byline Times. In early 2020, authorities sentenced him to 30 months in prison with four years of probation.
Tahir said he was able to see his father after he was released from detention, but that the man “was not as free as the Uyghur prisoners who recently had spoken with their relatives onscreen.”
Although the two spoke Uyghur to one another, Tahir said he believed his father was under surveillance by authorities because he told his son to remain silent and to defend the Chinese state.
“In March 2019, I was able to talk to my father onscreen twice for a very short time, and what I sensed from those virtual interactions was that he had no freedom at all in his speech,” he said. “I didn’t see any Chinese police present when I spoke to him onscreen, but what I knew was all he said was in a Chinese framework, even though it was uttered in the Uyghur language.
“From the context of his speech and his body language, I was able to conclude that even though he didn’t speak in Chinese, it was all Chinese propaganda,” he added. “I sensed a great fear he had for the Chinese authorities.”
Tahir said that compared to the time he first spoke to his father when he was released from detention to house arrest, the current situation of Uyghur detainees appears to have gotten worse. Noting that authorities’ efforts to eradicate the Uyghur language is part of the genocide China has been committing against the ethnic and religious minority group in recent years.
'Culturally savage'
At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities, though Beijing claimed they were “vocation training centers,” which are now all closed.
Credible accounts of the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, severe human rights abuses and efforts to obliterate Uyghur culture and religion have prompted the United States and some Western legislatures to declare a genocide and crimes against humanity in the region.
Forcing Uyghur prisoners to speak Mandarin and to bow in an outdated Chinese fashion is “culturally savage and politically extremist,” Tahir said.
In an audio recording provided to RFA by a Uyghur living in the U.S., a Uyghur woman living in Urumqi used an interpreter to speak in Chinese to her son, who is in a prison in Xinjiang.
The woman then cries as her son in Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is forced to kowtow to Chinese police officers during his online meeting with her.
“Her son is only 25 or 26, and now he’s forced to speak in Chinese and bow to the Chinese while walking backward onscreen,” said the Uyghur in exile.
According to the audio, the son was on his knees when he bowed his head in gratitude to the Chinese police, with his forehead almost touching the floor, his mother told the Uyghur in exile.
“My son’s forehead was almost on the floor when he bowed to the police,” the mother told her Uyghur relative in exile. “I hope my defenseless son will soon see sunshine [and] will meet his loving relatives in freedom.”
Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in the U.S. and vice chairman of the executive committee of the World Uyghur Congress, told RFA that he also received a video of a Uyghur prisoner speaking in Chinese with a relative during a videoconference, though the person did not understand Mandarin.
Speaking in a mother tongue is a basic necessity and right of the people, though Chinese authorities have stripped that right away from the Uyghurs, he said.
Police officers take the relatives of Uyghur prisoners to government complexes each month to see their imprisoned relatives over video. Both the prisoners and their relatives meet under police surveillance, Uyghur sources and a police officer involved in monitoring the visits told RFA.
A police officer who is in charge of such surveillance in Kashgar (Kashi) said on two scheduled days each month he takes the family members of Uyghur prisoners to a neighborhood committee complex where they can virtually meet with the detainees.
“Twice a month, we allow them to meet onscreen,” he said. “We take the relatives to the neighborhood community complex. Some months they were not allowed to meet because of COVID-19 prevention policy.”
Relatives often have to wait one to two hours for their turn. The calls usually last about two minutes and are conducted in Chinese, said the officer, who did not give his name so as to speak freely.
Police officers do not allow detainees’ relatives to say anything except to express their well-being and to thank the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.