![](\"https:\/\/docs.uhrp.org\/images\/DSSI4KRVIBGNZE6UK5ISCECZCE.JPG\")
Khadija Abdulaziz is photographed with her mother, Adalet Rahim, in her home in Mississauga, Ont., on Aug. 10, 2018. CHRISTOPHER KATSAROV\/THE GLOBE AND MAIL<\/em><\/p>\n
Although China has not formally acknowledged its re-education campaign, satellite imagery and online government-procurement documents have confirmed an extensive effort that has incarcerated hundreds of thousands in Xinjiang, locking many behind high walls and barbed wire.<\/p>\n
The campaign has also reached far beyond China, to the homes of a Uyghur diaspora made up of hundreds of thousands of immigrants and refugees around the world. Many of them are now struggling to cope with what is taking place in China, where the Uyghurs are a largely Muslim minority group that the Chinese government has accused of committing acts of terror and of harbouring extremism.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s happening in Xinjiang is serious enough that it should merit a broader re-examination of relations between Western democracies and China, says James Leibold, a scholar at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, who studies ethnic polices and conflict in China.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really casts the party state in the light of darkness that I think it deserves,\u201d he says. \u201cWe need to start seeing China as a global competitor that espouses a very different set of values than those that we hold dear in the liberal West, and we need to give up on this fantasy of engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n
China has produced no official statistics on a re-education program it has sought to keep from public view, but scholars have estimated that at least hundreds of thousands of people have been placed in internment.<\/p>\n
Among them are Uyghurs who have previously travelled abroad or even communicated with people elsewhere. Those with overseas connections, scholars say, have been specifically targeted for indoctrination.<\/p>\n
As a result, those in Xinjiang \u2013 which Uyghurs call East Turkestan \u2013 have cut communication with siblings and even children outside China, deleting them from messaging apps and disavowing family ties.<\/p>\n
That has left those in the Uyghur diaspora haunted by anxiety and guilt. In neighbouring Kazakhstan, worries about China indoctrinating large numbers of ethnic Kazakhs have prompted relatives of people in internment camps to beg the United Nations for help. Elsewhere, including in Canada, Uyghurs have been experiencing nightmares and thoughts of suicide. Some have been placed on antidepressants.<\/p>\n
\u201dIf Uyghurs inside the camps can be seen as direct victims,\u201d then \u201cthe Uyghurs in the diaspora are indirect victims of these very policies,\u201d says Mamtimin Ala, a Uyghur scholar and activist in Sydney, who has written a book on what he calls China\u2019s long-standing efforts to \u201cre-engineer the psyche\u201d of the Uyghur people.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlmost all Uyghurs have at least one family member being detained inside the camps,\u201d he says, and the ruptured ties with those in Xinjiang have contributed to a loss of belonging and identity.<\/p>\n
In March, Nurgul Sawut, a clinical social worker in Canberra, conducted a Facebook survey of Uyghurs around the world. Roughly 870 people responded from 18 countries. Ms. Sawut was startled by the results; almost a quarter regularly experienced suicidal thoughts. More than a third showed signs of clinical depression. Nearly half reported difficulty concentrating. A small percentage described being in a state of pervasive numbness.<\/p>\n
The survey wasn\u2019t scientific, but it made clear that \u201cthe mental health of our wider community, in the diaspora, is actually in crisis,\u201d says Ms. Sawut, who is herself Uyghur.<\/p>\n
At least 12 of Ms. Sawut\u2019s own family members have disappeared since the beginning of 2018. She believes they are in indoctrination camps.<\/p>\n
Part of the strain for overseas Uyghurs lies in knowing that their presence abroad is likely one reason relatives have been detained in Xinjiang. \u201cSo, it\u2019s quite a huge guilt to carry,\u201d Ms. Sawut says. She has organized online lectures to discuss mental health. People have reached out to her in tears, saying, \u201cI need help.\u201d Serious problems have emerged \u2013 self-harm and paranoia among them.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome cases have even developed to schizophrenia,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The burden is augmented by the magnitude of the number of people being interned: Ms. Sawut knows one couple in Australia who count 54 relatives and close friends among those who have disappeared, presumably to internment camps.More than 30 family members of Rebiya Kadeer, an activist and former president of the World Uyghur Congress, have either vanished or been detained. More than 20 relatives of Gulchehra Hoja, a broadcaster with the Uyghur service of Radio Free Asia, have gone missing.<\/p>\n
Some Uyghurs have been able to see the effects of indoctrination from afar.<\/p>\n In Mississauga, one Uyghur man said that two of his nieces, one of them only 15, were \u201cabducted\u201d for 15 days of indoctrination in March before being allowed back to regular school studies. He showed The Globe and Mail some of his niece\u2019s subsequent posts to WeChat, the Facebook-like social-media service. They include a video of people singing the Communist Party anthem and a memorial tribute to 97 years of the party\u2019s history.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything they post online is related to Xi or pro-China,\u201d said the man, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. According to former detainees, repeatedly pledging fealty to Mr. Xi is a central part of the indoctrination process.<\/p>\n The man, who asked that his name not be published for fear of further consequences for his family, counts 20 relatives in indoctrination centres. His sister was taken from a hospital while she was awaiting brain surgery.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the 21st century \u2013 it\u2019s unbelievable that things like this are happening,\u201d the man said.<\/p>\n But it is the unknown that most plagues many Uyghurs who, cut off from family, must rely on scraps of information they can glean through others.<\/p>\n Ayesha Hameed has lived in Canada since 2006; her father died this March. She wasn\u2019t told until April, through intermediaries. \u201cThe last time I heard my daddy\u2019s voice was a year ago,\u201d she said in an interview, her voice cracking. She herself came to Canada because, after leaving China for religious studies in Pakistan, she feared what would happen if she returned home. As for her other relatives still in Xinjiang, she says, \u201cI don\u2019t know if they\u2019re inside the prison or outside, alive or not.\u201d<\/p>\n The full extended family of another Uyghur woman in Southwestern Ontario, who asked that her name not be used, is still in China. She was told her sister was \u201cstudying,\u201d the term typically used for indoctrination, but hasn\u2019t been able to speak with any relatives since last fall. When she calls, they either don\u2019t answer or hang up.<\/p>\n It has taken a toll. \u201cI cannot concentrate on anything. My mind is off. I cannot sleep,\u201d she says. A doctor prescribed anti-depressants. \u201cI lost a lot of weight because I don\u2019t want to eat any more. Whenever I eat something, I remember back home.\u201d<\/p>\n A Canadian citizen, she called on Ottawa to intervene with China.<\/p>\n \u201cCanada is concerned about reports of widespread detentions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang,\u201d says Global Affairs Canada spokeswoman Krista Humick. Although Ottawa is not aware of any Canadian citizens in indoctrination centres, she said in a statement to The Globe and Mail that \u201cthe Canadian Embassy has expressed concern about detentions of family members of Canadians to the Chinese government. Canada has consistently called on China to respect, protect and promote the freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of assembly and association, and freedom of religion or belief of all Chinese citizens, including its Uyghur citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n Chinese officials have denied knowledge of a broader campaign in Xinjiang, and have boasted about the economic advancements Beijing has brought to the region. In a report last year to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, China said that \u201cdiscrimination against and oppression of any nationality are prohibited.\u201d Xinjiang\u2019s economy doubled in size between 2008 and 2015, and its 2015 rise in disposable income was the largest in the country.<\/p>\n On Friday, however, a vice-chair of the committee, Gay McDougall, accused China of turning Xinjiang into a \u201cno-rights zone,\u201d one \u201cthat resembles a massive internment camp.\u201d<\/p>\n China\u2019s treatment of the Uyghurs has also begun to attract attention in the United States, where it was the subject of a late-July hearing by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Commission co-chair Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, called the re-education campaign \u201cthe largest jailing of an ethnic and religious minority maybe since the Holocaust, certainly since the apartheid days in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n That scale is not an abstraction in Khadija\u2019s house in Mississauga. Her mother, Adalet Rahim, counts a brother and six cousins in indoctrination programs. Her father, Abdulaziz Sattar, says that some 50 of his relatives have been incarcerated \u2013 among them bureaucrats, teachers and a medical doctor. Mr. Sattar\u2019s parents are among them.<\/p>\n In 2016, he met up with his mother and father in Turkey. After she returned to China, his mother was detained and interrogated for two days. Her interrogators called Mr. Sattar a \u201cdangerous enemy of the Communist Party of China,\u201d she told her son late that year.<\/p>\n Months later, he heard that his parents had been sent to indoctrination camps. His father, now retired, had worked as a local government functionary, conversant in Chinese. His mother had been a housewife, devoted to her children. Racked by worry about them, Mr. Sattar lost his appetite and suffered from bad dreams.<\/p>\n Then, he was told his mother had died in internment. He cried on the spring day he received the news, the first time his wife had seen him in tears.<\/p>\n \u201cHe told me that there is nothing more painful than this,\u201d Ms. Rahim says.<\/p>\n Chinese authorities did not return the body of Mr. Sattar\u2019s mother to relatives in Xinjiang. He does not know why she died, whether she was given a religiously suitable burial or even the exact day of her death.<\/p>\n He is left asking what sin she committed.<\/p>\n \u201cChina,\u201d he says, \u201cshould answer for this.\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/docs.uhrp.org\/images\/V7EAYAVV35DCVC3WI25VDIKQ3Q.JPG\")
A picture of Abdulaziz Sattar’s mother, Adelet Teyip. DEBORAH BAIC\/THE GLOBE AND MAIL<\/em><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/docs.uhrp.org\/images\/QWKV7JOWD5AKFMTRQFBGJS2RAQ.JPG\")
Adalet Rahim and her husband, Abdulaziz Sattar, pose for a portrait in their home in Mississauga, Ont., on July 26, 2018.<\/em> DEBORAH BAIC\/THE GLOBE AND MAIL<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/docs.uhrp.org\/images\/Abdulaziz-Sattar-WITH-PARENTS.jpg\")
A picture of Abdulaziz Sattar with his mother, Adelet Teyip, and father, Ibrahim Sattar.<\/em><\/p>\n