All posts tagged: China

Between Islamophobia and homophobia: Life as an LGBTQ Uyghur in China

Published by Sam Tynen

I had a friend who was a medical doctor. He was gay and he was Uyghur, like me. We knew he was HIV positive about a year ago, but he never took any antiviral drugs because he didn’t want his family to find out. Last month, very suddenly he got sick and died just like that — complications from AIDS. His family didn’t even know he was sick, so it was very sudden for them. It’s really sad. There are a lot of young boys, 17 or 18, on Blued. I don’t think any of them understand or know to use protection, and there are a lot of male prostitutes that don’t use protection either. Erkin told me this story one day when I was living in Xinjiang. The prevalence of HIV among gay men in China was the main reason he wanted to talk to me. “Erkin” is a common male Uyghur name that means “Freedom,” and is a pseudonym. When we spoke, it was 2017 and I was living in Xinjiang. He had …

Uyghur voices in Istanbul

Published by Rachel Harris and Aziz Isa Elkun

It was Mother Tongue Evening (Ana til kechisi) at the Nuzugum Family and Cultural Organization for exiled Uyghurs in Istanbul. Over a hundred fully veiled women, and a handful of men, squeezed into a concert venue kindly provided by the Zeytinburnu municipal government. Several hundred children ran up and down the stairs brandishing light blue balloons printed with the crescent moon and stars of the Uyghur flag, while a group of young women teachers possessed of extraordinary calm and determination ushered them on and off the stage to deliver a series of Uyghur-language poems, theatrical skits, and songs. It was an inspirational event. “The principle struggle of our people,” declared Munawer Özuygur, leader of the Nuzugum organization, “is to preserve our language and culture.” Toward the end of the evening, a group of 10 girls sang, tunelessly but with heartfelt feeling, to a recording of a recently composed song, “No Road Back Home” (Yanarim Yoq). The song is an affective pop ballad created and performed by a young Uyghur couple who uses the stage names …

Why Xinjiang is an internal settler colony

Published by Darren Byler

The transformation of the Uyghur-majority lands of Southern Xinjiang known as Alte Sheher, or the Six Cities, came in waves, first in the 1950s when systematic political changes to Uyghur and Kazakh social life began, and then in the 1990s when resource extraction infrastructure, industrial farming, Han settlers, and the Chinese market changed all aspects of Uyghur life. An elderly Uyghur farmer in Khotan I interviewed in 2015 illustrated this process using the lives of trees as an example. He said that, in the Uyghur homeland, there were three generations of trees: First, there were the trees that still remained from before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. These trees were quite rare and viewed as sacred. Then there were trees that were planted in the villages organized as work brigades (大队 dàduì) during the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s. During this period, Uyghur farms were consolidated into communes and farmers were moved from standalone farming homesteads into villages, where most houses were the same height, and for at least some periods …

‘Ethnic extinction’ in northwest China

Published by Darren Byler

“That’s right. Since I’m from Southern Xinjiang I know that I’ll never be able to find a job,” Kaiser told the Han taxi driver in Mandarin. “If you don’t have connections, you won’t even be considered for jobs. This country doesn’t serve the needs of the ‘common people.’” Kaiser used the term “lǎobǎixìng 老百姓” — or “old 100 names” — to refer to the predicament of the common people. Of course, the surnames that belong to these “old 100” — Wang, Li, Xi and so on — do not include the names of Uyghurs. Turkic Muslim Uyghurs don’t use family names as surnames; instead, the given names of their fathers become their surname. Nonetheless, the Han driver accepted Kaiser’s claim to “laobaixing” identity without batting an eye. The middle-aged man with a crew-cut replied, “That’s right. The other day, when I was at this intersection here at Solidarity Road” — he gestured out the window — “there was some sort of motorcade up to the governor’s residence. We just had to sit here waiting for …