With no jobs near home, the indigenous Turkic peoples have to abandon their children to work in the \u2018bingtuan\u2019 cotton fields.<\/p>\n
2016-11-22<\/p>\n
\u200bSome Uyghurs living in China\u2019s Xinjiang are compelled into a type of sharecropper\u2019s existence as they are forced to abandon their children and travel hundreds of miles to find work in the cotton fields as there are no jobs near their homes, RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service has learned.<\/p>\n
An auxiliary police officer in Guma (Pishan, in Chinese) county, called the shortage of agricultural water and farmland the \u201cbiggest problem in our county.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe local labor force is forced to move other regions such as Aksu (Akesu, in Chinese) and Korla (Kuerle, in Chinese) and even to the bingtuan\u2019s cotton fields in the northern part of Xinjiang because the local farmers have no other income aside from being able sell their physical labor,\u201d said the police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
The bingtuan is the local name for the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, an economic and paramilitary government organization in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The bingtuan has administrative authority over several medium-sized cities as well as settlements and farms in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n
Guma\u2019s Mokuyla township loses about half its 21,000 population to the bingtuan\u2019s cotton fields each year as farmers there become a kind of indentured servant in order to make ends meet, the police officer told RFA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe local residents don\u2019t have enough income and they have to depend on a loan to live,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen they come back to their village, they have to pay off their loan, then they are empty handed and have to apply for a new loan.\u201d<\/p>\n
A teacher in Muji Township in Guma backed up the police officer.<\/p>\n
\u2018The kids always became the victims\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThere isn\u2019t enough agricultural land and water in the village of Guma so most of the local labor force left for other prefectures such as Aksu and Korla and bingtuan\u2019s cotton fields,\u201d said the teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of them spent their whole year, and some of them spent several months in the bingtuan\u2019s cotton field,\u201d added the teacher. \u201cBut the kids always become the victims of this kind of separation.\u201d<\/p>\n The teacher told RFA that the fate of the children \u201cbreaks my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLast year I taught a girl in the first grade who was 16 years old!\u201d the teacher said. \u201cYou never imagine a 16-year-old girl studying at the first grade of an elementary school.\u201d<\/p>\n The teacher told RFA the girl spent her childhood in the cotton fields of Aksu following her parents so she never had an opportunity to attend a school.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year both of her parents died in a car accident and her elder brother is busy working in the Aksu cotton fields, so nobody is left in her family to take care her,\u201d the teacher said. \u201cSo she was forced to start her elementary school education at 16.\u201d<\/p>\n Jur\u2019et Obul, who holds a medical services doctorate and is a board member of the Uyghur-American Association, said his people were going through the \u201cdarkest period of Uyghur national education\u201d since the Chinese exerted control over the region in 1948.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout their parents\u2019 love and a normal family life, the kids are becoming a mentally unhealthy generation,\u201d he said. \u201cUyghur children already lost their right to receive education in their mother tongue. Now, they face a life without their parents\u2019 love. This is a tragedy for Uyghurs because this kind of system forcefully changes them into a stranger at their own land.\u201d<\/p>\n Reported by Eset Sulaiman foir RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by Eset Sulaiman and by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With no jobs near home, the indigenous Turkic peoples have to abandon their children to work in the \u2018bingtuan\u2019 cotton fields.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3166","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\/3166","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=3166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3166"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}