In 2020, the Chinese government sentenced Mayila Yakufu, a woman from a Uyghur family, to six and a half years in prison for sending her parents money to help them purchase a house in Australia. The government called it “financing terrorist activities.”
Each morning, when I wake up, in Helsingborg, Sweden, three thousand miles from my native, I think of my mother, back home. Before my eyes have adjusted to the light, my hand has usually reached for my phone. Since the Chinese government began imprisoning an estimated million people, most of them Uyghurs, in mass-internment camps in the region, in 2017, the need to know that my mother is safe controls me.
Before going to bed, the relatives carefully inspect every room of the house, and then they sleep with my parents in their small bedroom. As my mother and father lie in their bed, the relatives sleep on a carpet on the floor a few feet away. My mother’s mind races in the eerie quiet; it is too tense and uncomfortable to sleep. When the sun rises, she is already up preparing the relatives’ breakfast.
My mother received a call from the Domestic Security Bureau in August, 2019, after Mayila’s second arrest. The police instructed her to wait for them at home. They would not tell her the reason for their visit. My mother worried that they were coming to take her away, too. She left me a sobbing farewell message and then put on seven pairs of underwear, two bras, and two long trousers. The officers entered without knocking, as usual.
I have never been certain of the details of my cousin’s captivity. After her first release, Mayila called me on WeChat. She told me that they had starved her in the detention camp, where she was held for ten months, and that she had been diagnosed with liver damage. On the night that she was released for a second time, she called me and asked me to tell her parents that she was alive. It was a video call, and I could clearly see her ribs.
The Chinese government’s reaction to the tribunal was also not what I expected. After two days of testimony by other witnesses, a cadre summoned my mother to their office and allowed her to have a forty-second video chat with Mayila. Mayila’s hair was shaved, her face was mottled with dark spots, and she was flanked by two guards. She said to my mother: “Please take care of my kids. I am so sorry that I’ve burdened you with this.
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