A Pakistani father’s ordeal: China seized his Uighur son and sent his daughters to an orphanage
Sakandar Hayat, a Pakistani whose Uighur wife was detained in Kashgar, in China’s Xinjiang region, and sent to prison, hopes to reunite with his family.
(Mashal Baloch / For The Times)
By ALICE SU,
SHASHANK BENGALI, SHAH MEER BALOCH
SEP. 25, 2020
2 AM
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan —
Sakandar Hayat wanted it to be a special Ramadan. He and his teenage boy Arafat left northwestern China and crossed the border into Hayat’s native Pakistan. It was a journey to bring father and son closer together. But it would end up tearing their family apart.
The two had been in Pakistan for three weeks when they received a phone call from back home in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. Hayat’s wife, an ethnic Uighur, had been detained. He and Arafat raced to the border, where Chinese police were waiting. They arrested Arafat, a Uighur like his mother, saying he would be questioned on what he had done in Pakistan.
“Don’t separate us,” Hayat begged the police. “Question him in front of me. I’ll be silent and he will speak truth.”
“You’ll have your son back in a week,” the police told him that day in 2017.
Arafat would be lost to him for two years.
Hayat is one of hundreds of Pakistanis who have suffered from China’s suppression of Muslims in the Xinjiang territory that is home to about 10 million ethnic Uighurs. Rich in minerals, gas and oil, the vast region is dotted with concentration camps where Chinese authorities have locked up more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, according to human rights groups, survivors, victims’ families and United Nations experts.
But increasingly, China’s campaign against Uighurs has spilled across its borders, entangling men such as Hayat, a Pakistani garment trader who, with his wife, raised three children while trapped between the politics and ambitions of two countries.
Hayat’s saga reflects how Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s hard-line vision of crushing dissent extends beyond consolidation of power at home to blocking criticism from foreign governments, even when their own citizens are mistreated. The silence of Pakistan, which has been outspoken on oppression of Muslims across the world but has refrained from criticizing China — a major economic benefactor and potential provider of COVID-19 vaccines — reflects how many nations are wary of jeopardizing their ties to Beijing.
President Xi Jinping speaks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept. 8, 2020. Under Xi, the Chinese government has tried to quell unrest through assimilation and force.
(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)
The Times interviewed four Pakistanis married to Uighurs who have been separated from their families, two Pakistani Uighurs who have been threatened by Pakistani security forces, and one Chinese Uighur who fled abroad via Pakistan after being detained in a camp. Fearing retaliation from authorities in both countries, several of them asked not to be named, although The Times reviewed their marriage and identification documents.
“It is very hard to leave your heart, your children, to live in a place worse than a prison,” Hayat said. After his wife and Arafat, who was then 19, were detained, Hayat was denied a visa to China for two years. The couple’s two daughters, who were 7 and 12 at the time, were sent to an orphanage in Kashgar without his consent.
He pleaded with Chinese and Pakistani officials for information on his family with no response until 2019, when Chinese officials said his son was receiving “education,” a euphemism for the camps where Beijing says minorities are receiving “vocational training” to combat “extremism, separatism and terrorism.”
Those who have been inside the camps tell a different story. Mohammed, a Uighur from southern Xinjiang who had been doing business between China and Pakistan since the early 2000s, told The Times that he had been detained for seven months. He was arrested when he crossed the border in June 2018, he said, then held in a camp with his hands chained together in a room of 35 people.
Resident line up at the Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center in Xinjiang, China, in 2018. Leaked documents indicate the site is an indoctrination camp.
(Ng Han Guan / Associated Press)
Every morning, they woke up at 4 a.m. for lectures about the Chinese Communist Party’s care for Uighurs, he said.
“The party is feeding you,” he remembered being told. “Uighurs are nothing without this party. If there was no Communist Party, Uighurs would have died of hunger.”
He and others were then forced to sing songs praising the party and Xi. After that they did morning exercise, running in circles as the sun rose. They were fed hot water and a piece of bread, and led to five hours of Chinese-language lessons. No one was allowed to speak Uighur, Mohammed said.
www.latimes.com
Sakandar Hayat, a Pakistani whose Uighur wife was detained in Kashgar, in China’s Xinjiang region, and sent to prison, hopes to reunite with his family.
(Mashal Baloch / For The Times)
By ALICE SU,
SHASHANK BENGALI, SHAH MEER BALOCH
SEP. 25, 2020
2 AM
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan —
Sakandar Hayat wanted it to be a special Ramadan. He and his teenage boy Arafat left northwestern China and crossed the border into Hayat’s native Pakistan. It was a journey to bring father and son closer together. But it would end up tearing their family apart.
The two had been in Pakistan for three weeks when they received a phone call from back home in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. Hayat’s wife, an ethnic Uighur, had been detained. He and Arafat raced to the border, where Chinese police were waiting. They arrested Arafat, a Uighur like his mother, saying he would be questioned on what he had done in Pakistan.
“Don’t separate us,” Hayat begged the police. “Question him in front of me. I’ll be silent and he will speak truth.”
“You’ll have your son back in a week,” the police told him that day in 2017.
Arafat would be lost to him for two years.
Hayat is one of hundreds of Pakistanis who have suffered from China’s suppression of Muslims in the Xinjiang territory that is home to about 10 million ethnic Uighurs. Rich in minerals, gas and oil, the vast region is dotted with concentration camps where Chinese authorities have locked up more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, according to human rights groups, survivors, victims’ families and United Nations experts.
But increasingly, China’s campaign against Uighurs has spilled across its borders, entangling men such as Hayat, a Pakistani garment trader who, with his wife, raised three children while trapped between the politics and ambitions of two countries.
Hayat’s saga reflects how Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s hard-line vision of crushing dissent extends beyond consolidation of power at home to blocking criticism from foreign governments, even when their own citizens are mistreated. The silence of Pakistan, which has been outspoken on oppression of Muslims across the world but has refrained from criticizing China — a major economic benefactor and potential provider of COVID-19 vaccines — reflects how many nations are wary of jeopardizing their ties to Beijing.
President Xi Jinping speaks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept. 8, 2020. Under Xi, the Chinese government has tried to quell unrest through assimilation and force.
(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)
The Times interviewed four Pakistanis married to Uighurs who have been separated from their families, two Pakistani Uighurs who have been threatened by Pakistani security forces, and one Chinese Uighur who fled abroad via Pakistan after being detained in a camp. Fearing retaliation from authorities in both countries, several of them asked not to be named, although The Times reviewed their marriage and identification documents.
“It is very hard to leave your heart, your children, to live in a place worse than a prison,” Hayat said. After his wife and Arafat, who was then 19, were detained, Hayat was denied a visa to China for two years. The couple’s two daughters, who were 7 and 12 at the time, were sent to an orphanage in Kashgar without his consent.
He pleaded with Chinese and Pakistani officials for information on his family with no response until 2019, when Chinese officials said his son was receiving “education,” a euphemism for the camps where Beijing says minorities are receiving “vocational training” to combat “extremism, separatism and terrorism.”
Those who have been inside the camps tell a different story. Mohammed, a Uighur from southern Xinjiang who had been doing business between China and Pakistan since the early 2000s, told The Times that he had been detained for seven months. He was arrested when he crossed the border in June 2018, he said, then held in a camp with his hands chained together in a room of 35 people.
Resident line up at the Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center in Xinjiang, China, in 2018. Leaked documents indicate the site is an indoctrination camp.
(Ng Han Guan / Associated Press)
Every morning, they woke up at 4 a.m. for lectures about the Chinese Communist Party’s care for Uighurs, he said.
“The party is feeding you,” he remembered being told. “Uighurs are nothing without this party. If there was no Communist Party, Uighurs would have died of hunger.”
He and others were then forced to sing songs praising the party and Xi. After that they did morning exercise, running in circles as the sun rose. They were fed hot water and a piece of bread, and led to five hours of Chinese-language lessons. No one was allowed to speak Uighur, Mohammed said.
A Pakistani father's ordeal: China seized his Uighur son and sent his daughters to an orphanage
China’s oppression of Muslims reaches beyond Xinjiang into Pakistan. Why does it stay quiet?
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