Kazakh refugee 'victim' of Chinese repression in Xinjiang
Sadriddin Ayupov, 44, managed to leave with his children and now lives near Almaty. His wife, a Chinese national, was sent to one of China’s “re-education” camps in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang seven years ago. Her parents were also held for years; her mother, for sending another daughter to study the Qurʾān in Egypt.
Moscow (AsiaNews) – Many ethnic Kazakhs want to leave Xinjiang to escape Chinese oppression for their homeland. The region is infamous for its “re-education” camps, which house Kazakhs as well as Uyghurs and other Central Asian Muslims.
In a recent report, Radio Azattyk presents the story of Sadriddin Ayupov, a refugee who managed to move to Kazakhstan with his children, thanks to his Kazakh passport, which he obtained years ago, but had to leave his wife behind in a Chinese concentration camp.
Sadriddin, 44, now lives in Shelek, a village in Enbekshikazakh district, not far from Almaty, working as a scrap metal collector.
He has to raise his three children on his own, because his wife, Mijasar Mukhedam, was taken to a re-education camp in Xinjiang seven years ago.
Every month he collects scrap metal and loads it onto a lorry to be taken to Almaty. His eldest son, 15-year-old Elzat, works with his father and takes care of his younger siblings, his 11-year-old brother Muslim and 9-year-old sister Fatima.
At first Sadriddin had placed them in a Kazakh kindergarten, but the teachers always spoke in Russian, while he and his children only know Kazakh and Uyghur, as well as some Chinese.
“Things would have been different if their mother was around,” he explained. She can make herself understood in all languages.
The family found a two-room flat on a third floor. Children are always silent, and do not talk to strangers. “During my student years, I learnt to cook, but it is still not the same the way my wife can,” he said.
After they moved, the children often got sick and had to go to the hospital every two, three weeks, but since “I didn’t have my wife’s papers, so I didn’t get child support,” he lamented. From time to time, “My sister helped me.”
His wife Mijasar is 37 and a Chinese national, from Atush, Kashgar district, and Chinese authorities have not allowed her to emigrate to Kazakhstan.
The two met in Egypt in 2006, and the following year they returned to Kazakhstan, where he became an imam at one of Almaty's mosques.
They began to collect the necessary documents for her to apply for Kazakh citizenship. Under Kazakh law, a person married to a Kazakh national for three years can apply for citizenship.
They went to China where they spent six months to put together all the papers. About 15 were collected, including proof that she was not wanted by the law and that she did not have a criminal record or had left the country illegally.
However, the Chinese papers were valid for only one month and the bureaucratic process dragged on too long, forcing the couple to go through it again, until his wife’s passport expired, forcing her to stay in China.
In 2016, China began to crack down hard on Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities opening camps devoted to political re-education.
While Sadriddin can travel on his Kazakh passport, his wife had to go back. She crossed into China at the Khorgos border crossing on her way to Urumqi to get new papers as well as be close to her family, especially after her father’s arrest, but she was stopped and sent to a camp, and has been held ever since.
His in-laws, who are both devout Muslim, spent three years in a political camp. His 63-year-old mother-in-law was punished for taking her other daughter to Egypt to study the Qurʾān.
Members of Sadriddin’s family are currently held in various camps in Xinjiang. China set these up as so-called vocational centres, saying that they would be shut down in 2019.
Mijasar, however, wrote to her husband in 2021, saying that she was under house arrest. She is able to communicate a couple of times a year via WeChat, and is eager to meet her loved ones as soon as the Chinese let her go, perhaps with the help of Kazakh authorities or even the European Union, after her husband approached the latter, so far without success.
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