For Uyghurs in exile, the suffering of loved ones is a source of never-ending anguish – especially when their fates remain unknown.
Every exiled Uyghur carries a load: the “enormous pain, the hole in your heart, the burden on your shoulder and the nightmare in your sleep,” in the words of Yalkun Uluyol. Uluyol’s father is serving a 16-year prison sentence; an uncle has been condemned to life; and 30 or so other family members are serving long jail terms. Those not imprisoned have become coerced laborers or have simply disappeared.
The pain of separation never recedes; in fact it increases with the passage of time, he told The Diplomat. “Every exiled Uyghur feels like this to some extent or another.”
Seven years have passed since mass roundups, internments, and extrajudicial jail terms were foisted on the 15 million or so Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in his homeland, an area three times the size of France bordering the ex-Soviet Central Asian states, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Chen Quanguo, fresh from quelling dissent in Tibet was appointed as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s new governor in August 2016; his remit was to do the same in “restive” Xinjiang. read more