{"id":4443,"date":"2018-11-12T20:17:45","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T20:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2018\/11\/12\/we-can-reach-you-wherever-you-are-uighurs-abroad-feel-chinas-reach\/"},"modified":"2018-11-12T20:17:45","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T20:17:45","slug":"we-can-reach-you-wherever-you-are-uighurs-abroad-feel-chinas-reach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/we-can-reach-you-wherever-you-are-uighurs-abroad-feel-chinas-reach\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We can reach you wherever you are’: Uighurs abroad feel China\u2019s reach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eysa<\/span><\/span> thought he had finally escaped the shadowy Chinese<\/a> security services that had pressed him into serving as a spy against his own community and turned his life in Xinjiang province into a living hell for three years. He had moved himself and his family to <\/span>Turkey<\/span><\/a>,<\/span><\/span> and begun to carve a new life out for himself among the ethnic Uighur<\/a> Muslims seeking refuge in a country with a language and religion similar to his own.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Then the 36-year-old began receiving messages on his phone from Qurban, the state security official who had detained him, pressed him into collaborating with the Chinese services, and then sought to throw him to the wolves when he had proven himself useless.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201c<\/span><\/span>Eysa<\/span><\/span>,\u201d his interrogator begins, in one of several recordings he retained on his phone and plays for The Independent<\/em>. \u201c You think you\u2019re safe in Turkey. But what about your brothers and in-laws?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Eysa<\/span>, a 36-year-old ethnic Uighur<\/span>, was blackmailed into spying for the Chinese intelligence services (Tara Todras-Whitehill<\/span>)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Human rights advocates in recent years have raised alarms about the treatment of China\u2019s Uighur minority, a Turkic language-speaking, mostly Muslim population concentrated in the nation\u2019s western Xinjiang province. The UN in August <\/span><\/span>voiced<\/span><\/a>concern<\/span><\/span> that perhaps a million Uighurs were being held in conditions resembling a \u201cmassive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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But increasingly, say members of the community, security professionals and scholars, the crackdown on Uighurs is extending across the globe, with Chinese operatives threatening to silence, intimidate and blackmail those who make it abroad.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to Istanbul, experts close to the Uighurs living abroad say the Chinese security forces are seeking to infiltrate, recruit spies, and threaten embers of the ethnic group in Munich, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Oslo <\/span><\/span>and<\/span><\/span> Helsinki.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n