Author: Abdurehim Gheni translated by Bilton.

My name is Abdurehim Gheni. I am ethnically Uyghur. I was born in East Turkestan which has been occupied by the Chinese Communist government on December 22, 1949. The Chinese call my country Xinjiang meaning “New Frontier” that still carries with itself the colonial nature of my nation. In May 2007, I came to the Netherlands and applied for political asylum in order to escape from the Chinese oppression. Since 2015, I have been working at a soil cares research center in the Wageningen.  Now, I have wife and three kids.

 

Why do I protest against China’s regime persistently at Amsterdam dam square ?

I have lost contact with all my family members in East Turkestan (so called Xinjiang) since 23rd May, 2017. I don’t know if they are alive, dead or in concentration camps or in prison. Although, I have tried by different means, I haven’t been able to reach them. Since 2014, China’s government have built up concentration camps in East Turkestan and locked up more than 3 million Uyghur and other Turkic nations, these people have been being subjected to inhuman torture, humiliation, and death and becoming source of live organ trade. If I was in Eat Turkestan, I would be sent to one of these concentration camps, tortured, used for organ trade, even already died. I would be deprived of every basic human rights. God saved me from that. So that, to fulfill my obligation and duty to save my nation, I have protested against China’s regime on every weekend since 23rd, June, 2018 at Amsterdam Dam square and become the voice of voiceless people and try to fulfill my duty.

About my colonized home country: East Turkestan

East Turkestan is 1,836,000 square kilometers. It is rich in more than 90 kinds of natural resources, including iron, coal, copper, gold, uranium, zinc, chrome, comprising 80 percent of China’s total natural resources. Its geographic location has strategic importance in Eurasia, and is also one of the biggest autonomous regions in China. It borders many countries including Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Tibet, China, and Mongolia. 

The population in East Turkestan is more than 30 million, and the Uyghurs are the original inhabitants of the land. The Uyghurs practice Sunny Islam.

The Uyghurs have been living as an independent nation for 3,000 years, and have built many kingdoms, including Orhon Uyghur Khaganate, the Idqut Uyghur Khaganate, the Karahan Khaganate, the Sa’ediya Kingdom and Kashgaria. My nation enjoyed brief but crucial independence by establishing the East Turkestan Republic in 1933 and once again in 1944. However, these republics were short-lived and crushed by the external forces, the then Soviet Union, the Great Britian and China as part of the Great Game played inside and outside of Central Asia.
Since the Chinese occupation, the Uyghurs have systematically been subject to a series of cruel measures aiming to supress, dilute and, finally, wipe out the Uyghur identity. The measures have currently developed into a state-sanctioned strategy to enforce the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs as a final solution to the Uyghur issue.

Chinese Genocide in East Turkestan

Chinese assimilation targeted Uyghur people had long been carried out slow pace and had mainly been conducted through banning Uyghur language at schools and sentencing and executing top dissidents who were discontent with government policies since occupation and colonization.

         

However, since the end of 2016, Chinese authorities have collected all Uyghur passports and restricted communications of the Uyghurs with the outside world, confining them in a surveillance state equipped with such cutting-edge technologies as face recognition, DNA profiling and security cameras. They have demolished many Mosques and have taken their right to practice their religion, forcing them to denounce their religion. To expedite the extermination of the Uyghurs, the Chinese have established may camps across East Turkestan in the name of “re-education centers” that can remind us actually of the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. According to a variety of sources, more than three million Uyghurs have been arrested and put in these camps so far. The life inside these camps has strictly been kept from the outside world. However, it has recently been revealed to the outside world by two Kazakh citizens who had spent more than 8 months in the camps that the Uyghurs inside the camps are brainwashed, physically tortured, psychologically tormented and bio-chemically experimented on. This can only be the tip of an iceberg that points to something far more profound and horrible than what we have known to date.

Deaths in prison are continuously increasing. Their bodies aren’t being sent back to their families. Instead of being buried traditionally, they are being cremated according to Chinese ways. This has also raised some concerns that they may have been the victims of organ harvesting that is notoriously rife in China. 

Current Situation of East Turkestan

1. Political re-education camps—an estimated number of more than 3 million Uyghurs have been incarcerated into these camps, more accurately concentration camps, where they are subjected to hunger, rape, inhumane medical experiments, torture, and organ harvesting and brutal murders. Children of these victims have lost their parents and become orphans.
2. Elimination of Uyghur intelligentsia—Famous Uyghur scholars are imprisoned and executed for teaching religion, culture and history of the Uyghur nation. Those Uyghurs who have made a significant contribution to Uyghur society, art, culture, business and religion have indiscriminately been rounded up and been sentenced to more than ten years in prison with no proper legal process. Some villages and towns where there was a sizable Uyghur community have been almost deserted—becoming a ghost village or town.
3. Sexual abuses, Forced marriages and trafficking of Uyghur women—Thousands of young Uyghur women have been forced to marry Chinese men, used as sex slaves or become victims of human trafficking. Meanwhile, Considerable number of Uyghur women regardless of age are sent to Concentration camps and these Female detainees in East Turkestan are routinely forced to take medication that affects their reproductive cycles, and are tortured, denied treatment for health problems, and subjected to sexual harassment and gang rape by policemen and other forms of abuses.
4. Intrusive indoctrination—More than a million Chinese Communist officials have been dispatched to live with local Uyghur families as a sign of the government’s increasingly tightened grip over the private life of the Uyghurs.
5. Ban on every aspect of religion—a sweeping control has been placed on every aspect of Islam, including prayers, fasting, Islamic diet, religious texts, interpretations, names, beard and funeral, etc.
6. Forced abortion of Uyghurs—it’s documented by Chinese Government that over 15 million “illegal births” among Uyghurs have been prevented over the past 60 years.
7. Organ harvesting of Uyghurs— Uyghur detainees in the Concentration Camps are secretly executed or sedated on a surgeon’s table as their organs are being removed one by one against their wills and sold in the tightly controlled internal market in China.
8. Ever-expanding surveillance state—by using such advanced technologies as facial recognition, mandatory collection of DNA samples, retina scans and voice recognition, China has created a total surveillance state in East Turkestan, placing Uyghurs in a state of dreadful fear and irrevocable trauma.
9. Economic exploitation—all the wealth and property of Uyghurs have almost been confiscated by the Chinese Government, driving them into abject poverty.
10. Rapidly deteriorated health conditions—Over 46 nuclear tests have been conducted in East Turkestan over the past decades resulting in over 800,000 deaths among Uyghurs, and more than million people suffered from various diseases due to radiation.

What I have described above has recently been stated in the world media. It sounds unbelievable. But it is sadly true. Still worse, this is only the tiny fraction of the enormous genocide that the Uyghurs are going through in the 21st Century in the very eyes of the whole world.

We are all humans, we are all created with blood and flash, every human being has rights of living free from fear! 80 years ago, humans unified and promised no more concentration camps. But, today Chinese Communistic regime built up modern, more crucial, more deadly concentration camps and rounded up more than 3 million Uyghurs. Your silence contributes and embolden China to carry out open holocaust against Uyghurs. Your every support, every word, every action against china’s genocide over Uyghurs makes difference. Support us! Take action to stop this ongoing genocide and holocaust! Your every support is greatly appreciated! Thanks to everyone.