Alicia Kearns, a UK lawmaker in the House of Commons, recently shared her concerns on social media regarding the ongoing suppression and genocide of the Uyghur Muslim community in Xinjiang, China.
While chairing a foreign committee meeting in the UK, Kearns recently heard the personal experiences of Yalkun Uluyol, an exiled Uyghur rights activist, who shared the atrocities faced by his relatives in China.
Taking the matter to X, Alicia Kearns mentioned that “@YalkunUluyol shared his story, and that of his family, with the Foreign Affairs Committee. It is a heartbreaking insight into the reality faced by the #Uyghur people, one of loss, forced separation, grief, and the ache of the unknown. Genocide is taking place in #Xinjiang”.
During the foreign affairs meeting, Uluyol said, that his last visit to his hometown in China was in 2016, as he could not revisit because of mass detentions. The Uyghur rights activist further mentions that “the first member of my Uyghur family who was taken for re-education was taken in September 2016. Further my father disappeared in June 2018”.
“In 2020 was able to trace my father to a re-education camp built in my hometown. He was labelled untrustworthy for having relatives abroad. I had no communication with my family back home. So it took me 2 years to trace my father back to a detention camp,” Uluyol further said.
While spotlighting the strict security protocol forced on the Uyghur community, Uluyol mentioned that “the day I got married, I had shared some photos of myself on a Chinese social media, to share my happiness with my relatives back home. This had resulted in the forceful interrogation of all my relatives back home”.
He further added that the UK government in April 2021 had voted that China had been committing genocide on the Uyghur people and that same year the foreign affairs committee held its first inquiry. And since then nothing has changed towards the positive.
Narrating another incident of atrocities inflicted by the Chinese authorities on his relatives even abroad, the Uyghur rights activist added, “Another time when I had shared a photo of my daughter on the Chinese social media. It resulted in police intimidation of my in-laws abroad. Further, I came to know very late that my father was sentenced to 16 years of prison, for no reason. Just like my uncle Ahmed Yakub who was sentenced a lifetime imprisonment.”
The Uyghur rights activist further took names of several of his relatives, intellectuals, and other ordinary people who have been sentenced to several years in prison. He further mentioned that some of his relatives and friends back in Xinjiang were sent to production facilities as a condition of release, and some of the captured were released but were kept under strict surveillance. Yalkun Uluyol mentioned that her daughter had passed away recently. But, he does not even know that his father even knew that he had a granddaughter.
While giving the conclusion of atrocities that he and his people back home have to bear at the hands of Chinese authorities Uluyol said that “this is just my storyline of witnessing the milestones of worsening conditions in the region. From Mass detentions to state-imposed labor transfers, to unjust imprisonments and transgressional repressions added to the inability to communicate back home. I can dive further into mass imprisonment in labor camps. But nothing has improved as of yet, in terms of human rights violations in my hometown. As it is reflected in my life and hundreds and thousands of other Uyghurs”.