The security agents came for Adeham Abliz late on a Thursday night.<\/p>\n
That day, September 8, 2016, had been much like any other in the 59-year-old Uighur man\u2019s life in the city of Ghulja in north-western China.<\/p>\n
Abliz, a shopkeeper, had performed his five daily prayers, starting with fajr at dawn through to isha after dusk. He had wandered through the neighbourhood and brought home groceries after a day of fasting in the lead-up to the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.<\/p>\n
He would not be allowed to finish dinner. Around 11pm, two officers in plain clothes arrived at the house.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to talk to you about something. You need to come with us,\u201d they told Abliz, a devout Muslim who had provided religious teaching in the local community and kept religious texts in his house \u2013 marking him as a subject of suspicion for the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n
Abliz and his family resisted, demanding to know why he was being taken. Ignoring their desperate pleas, the two men escorted him outside and took him away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the last time I saw my father with my own eyes,\u201d says his daughter, Meyassar Adham. The same day, she had been granted a visa to join her partner in Australia. Advised by her migration agent to urgently get out of Xinjiang province, she left a week later, bound for the safety of the Adelaide suburbs.<\/p>\n