Police confiscate her passport after she tries to visit her son and grandchildren outside Xinjiang.<\/p>\n
2016-10-07<\/p>\n
An elderly Uyghur woman living in Xinjiang is being threatened and harassed by police, who have warned her not to speak to foreign media after preventing her from traveling abroad to visit her son and grandchildren in Turkey, sources say.<\/p>\n
Rabihan Musa, 82 and a resident of Bortala city in Xinjiang\u2019s northwestern Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, had tried in February to leave Xinjiang to visit her family members, who had fled Xinjiang for a better life in Norway six years before, Rabihan told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/p>\n
But police seized Rabihan\u2019s passport before she could purchase a ticket, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFour policemen came rushing to my house in the evening on Feb. 1 and told me they had come for my passport,\u201d Rabihan said. \u201cI was so scared.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said they would give it back to me in three or four days, but after four days had passed they had still not returned it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rabihan was then told by police that her passport had been taken because her son Kurbanjan Arip, 50, had met with exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer while in Norway and was \u201ca member of her organization,\u201d the Munich-based exile World Uyghur Congress, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom February to April, I went to the police station almost every day,\u201d Rabihan said, adding, \u201cI stood at the gate, but they would not let me in, even on the coldest days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police officers turned away her calls, shouted at her in the street, and refused to let her use the station\u2019s restroom, Rabihan said.<\/p>\n
‘They laughed at me’<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cOne day I could not control nature\u2019s call, and begged them to let me use the toilet. The guards were all Han Chinese, and they would not let me in.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the end I had to wet my pants, and my legs were soaked. They laughed at me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was so embarrassed while walking down the street because my pants were frozen in the cold, and I even had to get on the bus in that condition,\u201d Rabihan said.<\/p>\n \u201cI briefly considered suicide, but stopped myself after thinking of my children,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, I have stood at their office gate for the last eight months.\u201d<\/p>\n Alarmed after Rabihan gave interviews by phone to RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service, police offered to return her passport if she would \u201cend her petition,\u201d Rabihan said.<\/p>\n \u201cI said to them that they had told me to go over their heads with my complaints if I could find someone who would listen to me, and now I have,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Democratic rights<\/strong><\/p>\n Speaking to RFA from Norway, Rabihan\u2019s son Kurbanjan said that in supporting Rebiya Kadeer by taking part in protests and donating money to the Uyghur cause, he has done nothing more than exercise his democratic rights in a free country.<\/p>\n \u201cBesides, punishing my mother for my own so-called crime by taking away her passport only shows that China is a country ruled by lawlessness and terror.\u201d<\/p>\n Bortala prefectural police department vice head Dilshat meanwhile acknowledged having seen Rabihan standing at his station\u2019s gate.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen the woman waiting in front of the gate,\u201d Dilshat said. \u201cI heard about her peeing on her pants from my colleagues, but I don\u2019t know what she wants.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have the capacity to listen to everyone\u2019s needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Police confiscate her passport after she tries to visit her son and grandchildren outside Xinjiang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3034"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}