Many a time we look for extraordinary stories of extraordinary people, expecting stories that can
\nmove mountains – and we forget about the ordinary man. The man who was not academic but
\nloved sports at school, the man who had an unusual love for meat, the man who was not
\npolitically active, the man who was not trying to change the world, the man who just wanted to
\ntake care of his family. My brother Adil was just that. We were like most brothers growing up;
\nwith only two years between us we were joint at the hip and wherever he was, I was. Our mother
\npassed away in 1989, and our father later re-married, gifting us a younger brother Tursun and
\nlittle sister Medinur. While I was shy and closed off, Adil was very sociable and popular at
\nschool, and while I was very focused and academically driven, Adil preferred to focus on playing
\nsoccer and decided not to go to college.<\/p>\n
Although I was the oldest, Adil naturally took on the role as the older, stronger, and protective
\nbrother to me. Throughout our life, he was vehemently against learning any CCP propaganda,
\nand would never obey the police. He had so much pride paired with a strong ego that I am certain
\nwould not succumb to anyone or anything. He was strong-willed, tough, and too stubborn for his
\nown good. After our mother passed away, I wanted to pursue my Islamic studies seriously, so I
\nstarted studying at an underground madrassa and delved deep into studying the books of Bukhari
\nand Muslim, Islamic Jurisprudence, and Arabic grammar. Adil, on the other hand, decided to
\nstudy butcher-ship, started working, and later married at the young age of 19. He married twice
\nand had three children, Ekram, Elqanjan, and Subhinur. His children were the light of his eyes,
\nand all he ever wanted to do was protect and provide for them – as every father does. He was
\nstrict with them, cultivating them to be strong-willed and smart children with bright futures
\nahead of themselves. And his stern-ness, although perhaps too stern, worked in my favour as I
\nearned the title as their favourite uncle.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure what has happened to them now. Perhaps they have been taken to concentration
\ncamps, perhaps their organs have been harvested, or perhaps they have died out of extreme<\/p>\n
hunger.<\/p>\n
Adil was the famous Kebab shop owner in our town for two or three years until my father bought
\nhim a bus as a gift and he started his own transportation company, making him an extremely
\nsuccessful businessman in as little as five years. I, on the other hand, had been on the run from
\nthe police from 1998 as I had started teaching Islam to students after completing my studies. The
\nlocal government had issued a statement stating all students from our underground madrassa
\nwere to be arrested, including me. In an attempt to try and escape and stay hiding, I had changed
\nmy name, which was previously Abdulaziz Imin, to my current name Tahir Imin. While I was
\nhiding from the police under my new name Tahir, Adil was building a name for himself in our
\ntown and growing his family. However, despite our complete contrast in career paths and<\/p>\n
personalities, we were both equally subjected to the brutality of the CCP. In late 2016, they
\nstarted to arrest Uighur elites, intellectuals, scholars, and wealthy businessmen. One at a time we
\nwere being hunted down and sentenced to prison without trial. Sentences as long as fifteen years
\nwere being handed out, for reasons such as being too successful, or having Islamic knowledge.
\nMy business advisors at the time strongly encouraged me to leave East Turkestan at least for a
\nfew years, or I would be next. With only my wife and a few friends knowing, I made the decision
\nto travel to Israel in February of 2017, and narrowly escaped imprisonment.
\nMy days in Israel were bittersweet; I had immersed myself in studying the Israeli and Palestinian
\npeople, but I was far from my family. Despite thinking I was safe from the tyranny of the CCP,
\nthey had threatened me multiple times to return back home, or they would collaborate with the
\nIsraeli government to send me back. A mere six months later I moved to Washington DC where
\nthere was a small Uighur community. I established myself well, started my own Uighur led
\nmedia initiatives, and started to speak out about China\u2019s oppression of our people. I had enough
\nand I wanted the world to hear our story, and feel our pain. But I was to find out later, that my
\nactivism came at the expense of my family\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n
I lost all communication with my family from August 2017, and do not know the whereabouts
\nof any of them. In 2019, a family friend from Kashgar was in Turkey and informed me that his
\nbrother had been thrown in the same prison as Adil. Adil had been sentenced to 10 years in
\nprison, due to having a relationship with foreign enemies – me. I found out my step-mother had
\nbeen sentenced to 10 years for the same reason as Adil. I was forced to divorce my wife, and
\nhave no contact with my daughter Shehrebano Tahir.<\/p>\n
I miss my daughter very much.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been three and a half years since I have seen her.
\nEvery day I think of her, and I worry about her safety and health.<\/p>\n
We grew up in the far South of East Turkestan in a close-knit community. We were surrounded
\nby family, and our childhood was filled with memories of frequent gatherings at my
\nGrandfathers house. Once a month after the dawn prayer, all the women in our family would
\nwait for us to return from the mosque. We\u2019d be welcomed home with a table spread of traditional
\nUighur dishes, the sweet aromas filling the street, warming the house against the cold morning
\nbreeze. Occasionally we would bring home the Masjid Qari\u2019 (reciter of the Qur\u2019an), and spend
\nour hours in tilaawat (recitation of the Qur\u2019an) until the sun rose. These memories seem almost
\nlike a lie, as now the CCP has taken away everything I could have ever known about family – my
\nstep-mother, my wife, my daughter, and my brother Adil.<\/p>\n
And now I am left alone in the US bearing the burden of telling the world about them.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many a time we look for extraordinary stories of extraordinary people, expecting stories that can move mountains – and we forget about the ordinary man. The man who was not academic but loved sports at school, the man who had an unusual love for meat, the man who was not politically active, the man who…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-victims","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n