These stories originally published on believermag.com were recorded in Almaty by Ben Mauk, a travel writer and journalist based in Berlin, in collaboration with the Atajurt volunteer-run human rights group. In 2018, Ben began to travel to Kazakhstan to interview the family members of Xinjiang’s prisoners and disappeared. He also interviewed former detainees who described their own experiences. Most had crossed from China into Kazakhstan in the weeks, months, and years before their meeting, either by applying for residency and citizenship or by escaping across the border. The speakers have nevertheless chosen to use their own names and the names of their relatives, despite the risks to the family members still in China. In doing so, they hope to pressure the Chinese government to reconsider its policy of mass detention in Xinjiang.
- If I returned to China, my daughter would be released
- Then I’ll ask, how is the weather?
- It was in some mountainous place
- We trusted what the officials told us
- She didn’t read namaz
- Only then did we start to live decently
- At night, they uncuffed my arms but not my legs
- Eating with the students and sleeping in the classrooms at night
- Ordinary people weren’t being detained yet
- I don’t know—probably he already died
- At last, my back can meet the mattress
- In the homes of the disappeared
- Why are you refusing to eat this food provided to you by the communist party?
- If I don’t go back, my relatives will have problems
- They simply said it was the wrong thing to do, to go to Kazakhstan and have a child
- He is a loner, shy and modest
- It would have been nice to know my last day
- A typical Muslim
- The weather is getting bad
- We were burning everything at night