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<\/a><\/p>\nPicture 2. Gul was presenting on XJTV programe (1993)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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She also attended many TV programs with her beautiful dance in various festivals and annual events in her college years too. In 1992, she was chosen to attend \u201cThe 7th International Ethnical Dance Festival\u201d in Tokyo, Japan, as the only Chinese college student representative, when in her 2nd year of her undergraduate study, and she won the gold medal in that competition. In 1990s, Gul could be counted as one of the very few students who went abroad to attend such international competitions in China, so she was featured in the regional journal called \u201cXinjiang youth\u201d with her picture on its cover. Furthermore, she twice won the 1st prizes in national university festivals. In 1996, she was invited to be a host in the Newruz festival (Newruz means \u201cSpring\u201d for the central Asian people) which was organized by regional TV station. Because of her exceptional talents, special interest in art, and the various honors and achievements mentioned above, Gul naturally rose to be a star in public at her very young age. She learned diligently from the senior TV presenters during such events, which then motivated and increased her interest in this active career, as she enjoyed working to enrich the lives of her people using this special platform.<\/p>\n
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Time flies. Gul completed her university life with busy schedules, happy memories and excellent grades in her own major. The faculty at which she studied offered her a teaching position upon her graduation. However, Gul was a \u201cstrange\u201d young girl who preferred continuous challenges and was ambitious to explore new things in life. Wanting to follow her own interest and mind, she declined her first job offer, and went to the regional TV station with her graduate diploma and various certificates with huge interest. This incident highlighted that she was a brave young person who dared to knock the door of the person in charge at the station, and introduce herself with confidence about her future and conviction that she would do well with her career in journalism.<\/p>\n
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Gul started her broadcasting career in the late 1990s after her graduation from the Xinjiang Normal University, with her unique talent and passion of becoming a TV presenter and reporter. At that time, color TV had just become popular in China\u2019s major cities and became a new measurement of one\u2019s status and wealth in Uyghur society too. Gul was the first person in regional TV who has took the interest of children to live TV programs with her special thoughts and activities. Since then Uyghur kids have had their own program where they can sit together with a real broadcaster and listen to the fascinating stories from their ancestor\u2019s times. This program was welcomed nearly by all of the Uyghur children around East Turkistan (the size of which is 1.665 million km\u00b2) and therefore Gul had had countless opportunities to travel from North to South of the Tengri Tagh mountain. With this unique Children\u2019s program called \u201cTengri Tagh Ghunchiliri\u201d (The young flowers of Hantengri) Gul had chances to listen to the innocent voice of Uyghur children and witnessed their lives in all 16 major cities and thousands of villages all over this legendary region. Thanks to this colourful experience with children of all backgrounds, it increased Gul\u2019 s love for her motherland and her interest in the special role of a TV presenter further, and most importantly it broadened her knowledge on the current situations of Uyghurs as well. The naughty kids, who did not want to go back home after hours of playing outside, would go back to their homes in a hurry once they heard the starting music of Gul\u2019 s \u201cimaginative wonderland\u201d. As a result, that girl who used to appear on TV screens with her beautiful embroidery cap and etles silk dress became a popular image of the Uyghur girls in Chinese mainland TV as well. Because of her familiar image that people have seen from TV, almost every Uyghur family could have recognized Gul wherever she went. Some young people today who grew up with the company of \u201cTengri Tagh Ghunchiliri\u201d are still able to remember Gul\u2019s style of engaging children and how she had inspired them and became a special person in their lives, with her impressive and interesting stories.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nPicture 3. Gul with children at the cover photo of \u201cThe Young Flowers of Tarim\u201d journal<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Gul was successful in the beginning of her career by motivating thousands of children to have their own fabulous world of fantasy. In the meantime, she also learned a lot from a number of dedicated researchers and writers on children who had a desire to pass the Uyghur tradition and glamorous historical facts to the younger generation, through Gul\u2019s presentations on the children\u2019s programs. On top of that, her father always expected her to take a sincere approach to learning while making the programmes, believing that she could be the role model of those innocent Uyghur children and youngsters through her work. Therefore, she read many specialist children\u2019s books to increase her knowledge and even travelled to different places in the region to understand the reality of lives firsthand.<\/p>\n
With the assurance of her success in \u201cTengri Tagh ghunchiliri\u201d, Gul then worked on bilingual TV programs made in both Chinese and Uyghur languages. She also hosted many regional and national levels of annual celebrations and festivals on TV by cooperating with other mainland Chinese stations. Her special evening program related to the \u201c6.1 Children\u2019s Holiday\u201d was awarded the top prize for 4 years in the Uyghur region and the Chinese mainland. Because of her talents in action, she worked as an actress in a number of films too. During the process of her cooperative work with other TV presenters outside the Uyghur region, Gul got chances to see the lives of Han Chinese who lived in other provinces of China. She had been to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which called as \u201cbingtuan\u201d in mandarin, where China brought tens of thousands of soldiers from other provinces to the Uyghur region every year and trained them as army forces in the name of the stability and prosperity of the region. As a consequence, they occupied enormous land and water resources of this region to produce foods, fruits and other necessities of industrial goods which mainly transported to the Chinese major cities outside of this region beside the rich oil and natural gas. Nowadays, the size and the importance of \u201cbingtuan\u201d has become equal to the other provinces of China, as it has its own administrative government of all levels, which are directly governed by Beijing. After witnessing the huge difference between the implementation of government policies and various regulations in people\u2019s lives in and outside of the Uyghur region, Gul started to realize that her people were living in a white lie for so long, and many TV programs and news she had been involved were a form of communist propaganda; the so-called socialist ideas which were mostly praised by Uyghurs and other minorities in China and the happy faces of these non-Chinese ethnic groups on TV screens, with their traditional music and dances, have been used as a tool to entertain people while the majority Hans enjoying a different version of \u201cChinese characteristic socialism\u201d. In addition, Gul learned more about the true face of the communist party while working as a reporter on the news on the \u201cGhulja massacre\u201d which happened on the 5th of February 1997 in the city of Ghulja, which was called yili in mandarin, \u201cHong Kong\u2019 s successful return to the Chinese mainland\u201d, the death of Deng xiaoping and the propaganda on defeating \u201cFalun Gong\u201d nationwide, through their media efforts. In 1998, Gul was invited to the \u201cChina rich list\u201d by Hongkong HuaYu TV station, where Gul worked as a main program host for a film series with 12 episodes. After witnessing the freedom given to the filmmakers and reporters in this film, Gul had another opportunity to compare the difference between how she worked in her region by strictly supporting the government propaganda and the freedom she had and what she saw in other areas of the country she lived and served.<\/p>\n
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Nevertheless, the most striking transformation taken place in her inner thoughts was, when her team in the regional TV station and another team from Chinese\u2019s Shandong province had worked together on a series of 10 reality shows about a month. This government sponsored series mainly focused on how the staff and workers were sent from Shandong province to aid Uyghurs\u2019 regional development and helped them to build a prosperous and harmonious Xinjiang. The second part of this reality show was about praising the benefits of sending Uyghur school kids into major Chinese cities at an early age in order to gradually implement the unified Chinese-only education policy in the entire Uyghur region. She felt so powerless when she received the modified version of her original reports.<\/p>\n
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Although she felt very strongly about the differences between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in terms of living conditions, education, job and business opportunities, as well as healthcare issues, she had admitted that she did not have enough courage yet to reject their demands regarding what she wanted to say in any of her reports, because as a ordinary person, she wanted to keep her loved profession too. All programs they produced had to be agreed and signed by each person in charge prior to its broadcast and they must keep the same voice with the state news agencies, which is a propaganda agency of the Chinese communist party (CCP).<\/p>\n
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Gul struggled so much to work silently against her own will of serving her people with lies over and over again using her role in TV. This feeling of \u201ccheating her people\u201d made her sleepless sometimes because of her consciousness and her sense of responsibility. Just after experiencing such an uncomfortable time Gul felt in her cooperation with Shandong TV station in Chingdao, she had been given a new opportunity to go abroad for 3 months. As usual, she had signed a contract and agreed to come back after her visit to Europe.<\/p>\n
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During her short visit to Europe, Gul witnessed the fair treatment of people regardless of their nationalities, beliefs or other social and cultural backgrounds. By human nature, many of us are reluctant to look for the information which matters most and are curious to find out the why. So did our Gul. She searched for the RFA news website, which she had heard of while she was living in China. She then heard the voice of freedom; The voice of brave hearts who have been fighting for the freedom of oppressed Uyghur people in her country. These genuine plea and call for freedom surely made her to think about her own vision in life once again. Gul burst out crying when she heard the shouting voices of Uyghur demonstrators in Munich, Germany, who organized demonstration against the Chinese occupation and its brutal rule over Uyghur people, since 1949.<\/p>\n
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Uyghurs were calling \u201cWe want freedom! We want Chinese communists to get out of our motherland!\u2026\u201d That voice was the voice of millions of her people who have been living under the harsh control of the communist regime; those were the voices of people who lost their loved career just because they spoke or wrote something to advocate equality and fair implementation of the Chinese government\u2019s policies towards every Chinese citizens; those were the voices of people who lost their freedom only because they offered their daily prayers at the workplaces, schools, hospitals or other communal areas or taught their kids Qur\u2019an or send them to learn about Islam after their state school courses, or simply observed the holy month of Ramadan. Those are the voices today of some moderate Uyghur academics who were imprisoned for life, just because they refused the fake promises of their government to improve Uyghurs\u2019 and other citizens\u2019 lives based on Chinese constitutions!<\/p>\n
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Those voices of voiceless people truly touched her heart and made her speechless. Understandably, as those were the genuine voices of her own heart too, which had been telling her through many unjust realities in her home country because of her ethnicity, even though Gul and her co-workers had to follow the state propaganda during their daily job in China, in spite of their own ideas.<\/p>\n
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So, Gul started to dwell on what she had to do in her future career; she had struggled to choose between being the voice of voiceless and being a trumpet of the communist party. She was torn inside as she might not be able to see her beloved parents and friends if she chose a different path, the path to the freedom of speech and fight against CCP. Meanwhile, she also thought about the innocent children in her TV programs and her dedicated colleagues and the applauds of people in front of TV screen\u2026Each and every thing she participated in until her visit to Europe.<\/p>\n
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However, she took the difficult decision in the end, the decision that can represent her genuinely and enable her to become a strong voice for her oppressed people, at the cost of losing much more. After listening to her own heart, Gul made a great decision in her life without knowing what would happen in this totally different world in her future, in Sep 2001. What she knew clearly was that, she could now say the words she wanted to, without edition according to the communist regulations, and she could broadcast the real happiness and sorrows of her people back home. Therefore, she called the RFA Uyghur service by herself, and told them that she was willing to become a news reporter at that broadcasting company. The most senior staff and the founder of the Uyghur service at RFA was so delighted to hear Gul\u2019s brave phone call and agreed for her to join them right away. Gul can still remember that the director of RFA at that time replied to her call by telling her the following: \u201cWelcome to the RFA. We are very delighted to hire a well-known reporter of the Chinese news agencies here in Washington. This is a success of democracy over the dictatorship of communist regime; this is the triumph of freedom!\u201d However, some staff members at Uyghur Service raised their concern about the future situation of Gul\u2019 family in Urumqi, and suggested that she should change her name at work if she wanted to. However, our Gul did not give it a second thought and expressed her own decision to stay being herself. So, Gul\u2019s personal freedom started with a huge price. The local Chinese government in Urumchi carried out their revenge on her behavior, confiscating her parent\u2019s passports, and didn\u2019t allow them to travel anywhere outside of China. They issued a public notice in which Gul had been labelled as a \u201cseparatist\u201d and all her past TV programs in China were banned or destroyed.<\/p>\n
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But, Gul did not regret her decision because she believed that silence towards oppression is someone\u2019s closeness to death. Instead, she has become a true voice of her own people, and is letting the world hear their sorrows, whilst China has been spending millions of dollars to silence the voice of Uyghurs and other Chinese democrats against its brutality nationwide.<\/p>\n
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Fifteen years passed since Gul chose to live and work in the US. The more Gul missed her home and the smell of the streets in Urumqi, the more she moved herself forward to the fight against the dictatorship of the Chinese government. Gul is now a mother of three bright children and proudly doing the career, which she dreamed of from her early years. Ups and downs in life have not changed Gul\u2019 s motivation and her crystal clear aim of work for the benefit of her own people. Therefore, she channelled all the burdens of homesickness and other sorrows into her optimism towards the future of her homeland, through her consistent work style. She travelled with the members of Uyghur freedom fighters around the globe to maximize their voice of freedom; She has interviewed many foreign public figures too in order to let the world hear the voice of oppressed nations through their voices. She allowed the world to see the cries and the sorrows of countless Uyghur mothers who lost their children under the false accusation of being \u201cseparatists or terrorists\u201d by the Chinese government, and never stopped to show her support to them. She has always stood up with her people no matter how big the difficulties are.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nPicture 4. Gul was interviewing Lantos Human Rights Laureate Mrs. Rebiya Kadeer, the president of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), after the award ceremony. (USA, 2015)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nPicture 5. Gul was participating in the petition to free an Uyghur mother, Mrs Patigul Ghulam (2016), who has been repeatedly threatened and prosecuted by the local Chinese authority as she was determined to look for her missing son, after his unknown disappearance since \u201c5th of July, 2009\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Another significant change Gul has made during her career was that, she became the very first hijabi broadcaster amongst Uyghur reporters and has shown such a distinctive protest against Chinese\u2019s cultural assimilation towards Uyghurs. This is also one of the exciting decisions she has proudly made, as she struggled to wear it before.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nPicture 6. Gul was interviewing a Uyghur activist at the NED workshop (2013, USA)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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