Christian Uyghur: 'There is no hope' in China

FPI / April 13, 2021

Mamatili Yakuf, a Christian Uyghur who fled China for the United States describes the situation for Uyghurs in China: “There is no hope for us. There is no hope.”

Friends tell him it was a “miracle” he made it out safely and that he would not be alive today if he had stayed, Yakuf said in an interview with National File.

“When I came to America, I could see that this is human. They, as a people, are living as a human. But in China, no. That’s different. You’re living in a cage...like animals.”

Joe Biden called the mass internment being carried out against the Uyghur population in China merely a “different norm,” during his CNN town hall on Feb. 16.

“Culturally there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow,” Biden added.

Demonstrating the ethnic-cleansing nature of China’s treatment of its Uyghur population, Yakuf reports that conversions from Islam to Christianity made little difference to the CCP. “They don’t care about what religion you have,” he said. “The government wants to reduce numbers.”

Rather, Yakuf says that the Chinese government takes a particular disliking to Christian Uyghurs “because we are open minded.” He also believes the CCP prefers “Uyghurs to stay Muslim” because labeling them terrorists provides “a good reason to control them.”

Yakuf converted to Christianity from Islam 20 years ago after two years of Bible study at the encouragement of Christian Uyghur friend. He said he fled China in 2016 after experiencing years of oppression at the hands of the communist government.

Numerous sources, including Human Rights Watch, 60 Minutes, the BBC, and others have reported over one million Uyghurs rounded up and relocated in internment camps, allegedly for “vocational education and training” to combat poverty and Islamic terrorism, but where they are tortured, indoctrinated, killed, and female prisoners subject to gang rape and sexual torture.

The U.S. government places the number currently at 2 million individuals, with human rights groups estimating 3 million at its peak.

The National File reports: “The number of those prisoners declined after it was revealed that the Chinese Communist government was selling concentration camp inhabitants into slave labor; slaves for the factories nationwide.”

“These are some of the most serious abuses that the Chinese government has committed in modern history,” said Sophie Richardson, Director of Human Rights Watch, speaking to 60 Minutes about China’s program of interning its Uyghur population, and the forced collection of DNA from Uyghurs.

One of the interment camp rape survivors interviewed by the BBC, Tursunay Ziawudun, said she endured nine months in a Xinjiang concentration camp and, along with many others, was subjected to torture and gang-rape on almost a daily basis.”

Yakuf also believes the Chinese government has used Covid-19 as a pretext for medical experimentation on Uyghurs and to reduce their population. “If a million people died in China, that’s nothing. They don’t care about their people.”

Free Press International