Selacettin Bura, a 14-year-old Uighur exiled in Turkey, has not seen his parents for five years. He remembers that day in 2016 when he left the family home in northwest China’s “autonomous” region of Xinjiang on what he thought was a time-bound trip.
His two older brothers wanted to study in a Koranic school, “Forbidden thing with us”, explains the young boy. The trio left for Egypt. Above all, it was high time to flee the repression inflicted by the Chinese authorities on the Uyghur, Turkish-speaking and Muslim community.
Daily life had become hell, Selacettin could see it. His mother didn’t want to send him to school anymore, refused to let him play in the street with the other kids. The family lived with fear in their stomachs, fear of raids, denunciations, arrests.
The installation in Cairo will not last. In 2017, we have to leave again. An extradition agreement has just been signed between China and Egypt, the Uighurs no longer feel safe. The siblings decide to reach Turkey, where the largest Uighur diaspora lives, around 50,000 people strong, organized in mutual aid networks, associations, brotherhoods, and well tolerated by the Turkish authorities, who are not stingy with permits stay.
Meanwhile, the crackdown has intensified in Xinjiang where, according to testimonies and satellite images gathered by experts, more than a million members of the Uighur community are being held in camps. Those who are free live under the magnifying glass of the services, which track them mainly via their cellphones. “Since we are in Turkey, we have no more news”, Selacettin sighs.
16-year-old Hasan Abdulrahim arrived in Turkey in 2016 with his father to escape the repression of the Chinese regime. After giving it to a close friend, the father went back to pick up the mother and the other children who remained in China while awaiting the renewal of their passports. “He never came back, whispers the teenager with sad eyes. I never heard from him again. The same for my mother, my brothers and my sisters. I don’t know what happened to them. I miss them terribly. “
“Give a frame”
Every Uighur family in Turkey has at least one of its members detained in a camp in China. Like Selacettin and Hasan, eighteen other young Uighurs living in the Oku Uygur Bilig hostel, a brand new building located in the Selimpasa district of Silivri, 80 kilometers from Istanbul, have not heard from their parents for years.
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