![]() ![]() ![]() Some have been hounded and threatened with deportation by immigration officials of countries seeking to improve ties with Beijing. Those who have left Xinjiang face imprisonment if they return home and persistent insecurity abroad. Yet even when Uyghurs are free of China’s territory, they do not feel safe from its reach. The offensive has triggered an exodus of Uyghurs, according to the World Uyghur Congress, and exiles like Muhammet have become some of the most important sources providing the world with a picture of what’s happening in Xinjiang. The United States, as well as the Canadian and Dutch Parliaments, have labeled the repression a genocide. Roughly 1 million Uyghurs have been rounded up for “crimes” that include praying, wearing a headscarf, and having relatives overseas, human-rights groups say. In recent years, Beijing has mounted a crackdown in Xinjiang against the mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic group, subjecting its people to mass detention and unending surveillance in a merciless act of collective punishment. Read: Saving Uighur culture from genocide Now, I’ve entered darkness and I cannot see my way forward.” After my husband’s detention, I’ve existed in another universe,” Muhammet told me. “Before my husband’s detention, I lived in one world. Listen and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts Listen to the Uyghur refugee Aséna Tahir Izgil discuss life after escaping genocide on The Experiment podcast. Her mother-in-law would later confirm her suspicions. She assumed that the worst had happened, that her husband was now in the hands of the Chinese authorities. For a while, she did little beyond clutching her boys, crying over her uncertain future. But days turned into a week, then a week into two. Previously in regular contact with her husband, she initially hoped his silence somehow meant he was on his way. Muhammet describes the following days-alone, in a strange new city-as the darkest period of her life. “I will not lose faith in God,” he texted. His last message came through at 6:06 p.m. He had encountered problems, and officials were taking him away. But the tone of his updates quickly changed. That afternoon, he sent Muhammet a WhatsApp message to say he was en route to the port and would travel by ship to Turkey. The couple had heard from others in their community that Egyptian immigration officials-ostensibly acting at the behest of the Chinese government-were hassling Uyghur men as they left, so they decided he would come later, on his own. Her husband had not yet joined the family in Turkey. ![]() The Uyghur woman had arrived in Istanbul from Egypt weeks prior with her two sons, a toddler and an infant, after fleeing the Chinese region of Xinjiang. O n a summer afternoon nearly four years ago, Maryam Muhammet thought her family’s long journey to freedom was almost complete. This article is a collaboration between The Atlantic and the Fuller Project. ![]()
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