Throughline - Embedded: The Black Gate

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

In the Xinjiang region of western China, the government has rounded up and detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups. Many haven't been heard from in years, and more still are desperately searching for their families. Western governments have called this crackdown a cultural genocide and a possible crime against humanity.In this episode, the first of a three-part series from Embedded, NPR correspondent Emily Feng tells the story of one of those people. For years, a Uyghur man named Abdullatif Kucar had no idea what has happened to his wife and young children after they were detained by Chinese authorities. Emilly follows Kucar as he desperately searches for his family.But this story is bigger than one family. In this series, Emily also travels across Asia and dives into decades of history to uncover the massive Chinese surveillance of Uyghurs, getting exclusive interviews with the people suffering from that surveillance and the people upholding it – who sometimes are one and the same.This episode was originally published in 2022. To hear the whole series, head to https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510311/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. You're listening to Throughline from NPR. I'm Rand Abdel Fattah. And I'm Ramtin Arab-Louis. For years, the Chinese government has been detaining and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim groups

in the Xinjiang region of China. The U.S. and some European countries are calling it a, quote, cultural genocide. And in 2021, NPR's China correspondent, Emily Fang started following one Uyghur family, the Kuchar family, whose lives were torn apart by this crackdown. Three years later, she's still reporting on them. What she found became The Black Gate, a three part series on NPR's Embedded podcast. Today, we're sharing the first part of that series with you. And you can find the rest right now over in the Embedded feed.

Embedded is NPR's home for serialized documentary storytelling. Here's NPR's Emily Feng to take it away. Three years ago, I had a long conversation with a man named Abdulatif Kucar. And his story was unlike any that I'd ever heard. He's Uighur, a Turkic ethnic minority in Western China that mostly practices Islam. And he told me that for almost two years, he lost all contact with his wife and children. Abdulatif told me it all started one December evening in 2017. This is how he remembers it.

He'd been chatting with his wife Maryam on the phone. He was in Istanbul and she was back in China at their home in Xinjiang, a region in western China where most Uyghurs live. Maryam was exhausted and on edge because Chinese government minders, they call themselves relatives, had been keeping a close eye on her every day. The relatives would come and live with us sometimes. They would even sleep there at night

and have breakfast with us in the morning. So it was only in the evenings, right before bedtime, when Maryam usually had some privacy. She would wash the kids and then she would call me. But as I chatted, Maryam heard a knock on the door. It was 10pm. Abdul-Ati felt a surge of fear. They don't arrest people during the day. They only arrest them at night.

And on the other end of the line, he could also hear Maryam's fear. She was so scared, but she told me she had to open the door. So she put the cell phone away. I heard some noises, the sound of something breaking. After that, silence. Abdul-Latif tried calling Maryam back. Nothing. So he frantically called family, Maryam's cousins and sisters who live nearby in Xinjiang.

They got to his home early the next morning. They found my apartment was a mess. Everything was upside down. And our two kids were in shock by themselves at home. Our relatives went to the police station. They knew Maryam was there, but they were not allowed to meet her. The police told them that Maryam had been arrested. So, Abdulatif's cousins decided to take in the Kuchar's young children,

their son, Lutfullah, who was just four years old, and daughter, Isu, who was six. My cousins took care of our children, but then the cousins got arrested. So my sister-in-law took our children, and then she, too, was arrested. After that, Abd al-Teef lost all contact with his family. He had no idea where Maryam and the children were or what had happened to them.

Years later, I reached out to the police in Xinjiang about Maryam, but got no answers. And at the time, China still had strict COVID restrictions, which made reporting in the region basically impossible. I've been reporting on the arrests and detentions in Xinjiang since 2018, and I've heard from literally dozens of Uighurs who are desperately searching for family there. China has been methodically attempting to dismantle their culture by imprisoning the adults and putting children in state schools. That's what Abd al-Ati feared had happened

to his family. So he decided to try to save them against all odds. We'll be right back. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com, tease and seize apply. This message comes from This is History with Dan Jones, with a new season that relives the dramatic victories, bizarre parties, and deadly inventions of the Middle Ages.

Join the drama and relive the Middle Ages like never before. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from Wondery. Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast is back. Listen as the Grinch's celebrity guests try to persuade him that there's more to love about the holiday season. Follow Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news is about what matters to you.

Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation. So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes, and home prices. The S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever. Follow all the big changes and what they mean for you. Make America affordable again. Listen to The Indicator, the daily economics podcast from NPR. Abdülhatif Kucar now lives full time in Istanbul, Turkey. Still, it took him time and courage before he could tell a story. It's a traumatic experience for him because the Chinese state actively

intimidates Uyghurs, even those outside of China. At first, Abdul-Tahif didn't want to talk to me. He was worried that talking could risk the safety of those he loves in China. And at least one powerful person you'll hear from in our final episode even tried to convince him not to speak out. Those challenges are why reporting in Xinjiang is so hard. There's an enduring and secretive Chinese police state that even reaches into other countries.

But ultimately, Abdul-Latif decided that speaking out could garner attention and maybe pressure China to help his family. In the second part of the story, we'll hear just what Abdul-Latif went through to try to free his wife and kids. But first, it's important to understand how things got to that point. In 1949, Chinese troops marched into Xinjiang and declared it part of the new communist China. They promised autonomy for the Uyghur, the same pledge made to the Tibetans.

In the 1930s and 40s, Uyghurs and other ethnic groups had resisted Chinese occupation. They wanted their own nation-state. Abd al-Latif Kuchar's grandparents were part of that independence movement. My grandfather joined the war and was even the right-hand man of Hoja Nias. Hoja Nias, a famous Uyghur leader. But after Communist China took control, the Kucar family's history of resistance became a political stain. Abd al-Batif's father wasn't allowed to attend university until he joined the Communist Party

and gave up Islam. But after my father finished his education in China, he started to drink alcohol and he didn't let my mother pray. Because of these differences between my father and mother's families, they were fighting almost all the time. Abdul-Ti remembers constant conflict at home between his parents. Finally, his father sued his mother for a divorce. He was forced to appear against his wife in court. It was a horrible public affair.

During the proceedings, Abdou-Latif's father turned over his mother's prayer rug as evidence of a strict Muslim faith. Later, he abandoned the family. Abdou-Latif's mother decided to leave China permanently. In 1986, she took Abdou-Lif and his older brother Abdülaçip moved to Turkey. The boys became Turkish citizens. There are now an estimated 50,000 Uyghurs living in Turkey because the language and culture are so similar. But the Kutra brothers couldn't leave

China behind completely. They still had family and friends in Xinjiang, and even from afar, they could see the economy was slowly taking off. In 1990, when they were in their early 20s, the brothers opened up some restaurants in Xinjiang and later a textile export firm. China was still enforcing religious and political controls over Uighurs, but as Abdur-Rajeeb put it, it did not happen all at once. The oppression of Uighurs was going on for many years. But the Chinese authorities did not target everyone in one day.

Maybe I was too young or ignorant. But at the time, I did not notice. Throughout the 90s, as their businesses grew, the brothers began to feel hopeful. Maybe China was changing. Maybe this could be home again. And there was another reason for Abdulatif's optimism. He met Miryam Ahmet. She was from his hometown.

We are both from the city of Kuja, but we met at a party in Arumchi. Abdulatif says they'd hang out at his restaurant in Arumqi, Xinjiang's capital. It was a place where transplants from Kuca liked to go and eat. Abd al-Latif and Mirjem were married in 1998. After their marriage, Abd al-Latif says he tried to convince Mirjem to move to Turkey with him and trade in her Chinese passport for a Turkish one. But she said no, I was born here and my home is in China. She always loved her country, so she didn't want to leave it. She didn't want to leave behind her Chinese nationality.

So, Abdulatif tried splitting his time between Turkey and China. A few months in Istanbul, then half a year in Xinjiang with Maryam, which worked because China was trying to grow the economy and it wasn't very strict about businessmen coming in and out. But that brief window of openness in the 1990s quickly ended after September 11, 2001. It's 852 here in New York.

I'm Bryant Gumbel. We understand that there has been a plane crash on the southern tip of Manhattan. You're looking at the world trade center. On 9-11, terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The attacks changed the world. And although Miriam and Abdul-Atiyev didn't know it at the time,

the attacks kicked off a series of dramatic changes in China that would eventually lead to Miriam's arrest. It began with Chinese authorities interrogating Abdulatif every time he arrived from Turkey. They would ask, what are you doing? Who are you talking to in Turkey? How are you making money? I met basically every police officer in Urumqi. When I got to Kutcha, my hometown, they even

asked me what is my older brother doing in Turkey, how many children he has, and what his children are doing. The U.S. war on terror had given China an opportunity to suggest that perhaps it too had a terrorism problem on its hands. Part of the issue was what was happening in Xinjiang. Despite Chinese controls, Uighur culture and Islam were having a resurgence. Ornate mosques were replacing old shabby ones. Bookstands started selling DVDs about the meaning of Islam and many people began to pray five times a day.

China does not like this. It begins to publicly blame historical ethnic tensions on Islamic extremism. In 2002, Chinese authorities claimed that Uighur militants had been behind more than 200 terrorist attacks between 1990 and 2001, and it begins cracking down on Uighurs who openly practice their faith. who openly practice their faith. Kalbunor, a young Uyghur mother, she asked that I not use her last name, was living in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar

as the crackdowns intensified. Kashgar was known for its Uyghur culture and religious expression. Kalbunor told me how authorities began to harass her family. Our family was clearly religious. My husband prayed five times a day, so officials would control us.

They would visit us at night regularly and find any excuse to punish us. Every time anything happened in Kashgar city or neighboring cities, like a minor uprising or protest, even if it was far away, the local police station would call us and the other religious families pick us up and bring us to the police station where we would be interrogated or just kept there for up to five days for propaganda lessons. The police knew we had nothing to do with this, but they would interrogate us anyways.

Uyghurs said this kind of treatment was widespread. Uyghurs said they were passed over for state jobs and paid less than their Han Chinese counterparts, China's majority ethnic group. Chinese officials say Uyghurs have more economic opportunity under communist rule. Still, I remember when I first moved to China, I was shocked to see Uighur acquaintances turned away by hotels and taxis who just wouldn't take Uighurs. And as more Chinese state companies and Han Chinese people moved into Xinjiang,

many Uighurs lost their land. In July 2009, all that growing resentment finally exploited with deadly consequences in Xinjiang's capital, Arumchi. It's been three days since bloody riots broke out pitting ethnic Uighur Muslims against the dominant Han Chinese. The spark? Two Uighur factory workers died in a brawl with the Han.

Now 156 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured, making it the worst ethnic violence this country has seen in decades. After the riots, China rounds up and arrests at least a thousand and perhaps far more young Uyghur men. Abdul-Tafif and Maryam were in Turkey at the time, and they watched the events with alarm. But like many Uyghurs, they hoped the violence and the state repression would pass. They continued to build their lives. In 2011, their daughter Aysu was born, and in 2013, their son Lutfullah. But things were not getting better.

Things were getting worse. The same year Lutfullah was born, several Uyghurs rammed a car into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, wounding dozens of people and killing two pedestrians. Chinese authorities investigating the car crash in Tiananmen Square on Monday have named two suspects. China immediately declared it a premeditated terrorist attack, orchestrated by Uyghurs with ties to international extremist groups. The Chinese government blamed Uighur militants for other attacks too, including one in 2014 where 31 people were stabbed to death in a train station.

Media reports there say several attackers boarded a train at the Kangming railway station. There is evidence that several thousand Uighurs snuck abroad to try to train with militant groups. Some have joined Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and Uighurs snuck abroad to try to train with militant groups. Some have joined Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and Uighurs have been responsible for some attacks in China during the 2000s. But there is no sign extremism among Uighurs is widespread, or that they managed to set up cells in China. Still, China's response is swift and it is brutal. In 2014, China launched the People's War on Terror. China is waging a war on terror after a series of deadly attacks, many of them in Xinjiang.

The government quadrupled police funding for the Xinjiang region. Soon, there was a police station on nearly every city block. Authorities also cracked down on international travel. Mariem's Chinese passport was confiscated. Like most other Chinese Uyghurs, by the end of 2016, she's not allowed to travel without permission from the government. Abdul Latif says he and the children also had their Turkish passports confiscated in China, trapping them in Xinjiang. Abdul Latif says after that, he mainly stayed in the apartment. If you wanted to go outside, you had to pass through a security check.

And without an ID card, you couldn't even go into your own home. We were a bit lucky because we had a special letter from the local government. Sometimes you had to explain what the letter was to officials or wait two or three hours to get through security checks, since it was not an official ID card. Sometimes we got angry and sometimes we could only laugh at our situation. In part because Abdul-Latif and his family don't speak English, as I was reporting the story, I relied on a weaker activist and translator for help. You can hear him asking Abd al-Tafif questions. His name is Abd al-Wali Ayyub, and he too has his own story about China's crackdown. So tell me a little bit about yourself. How do you want to be introduced? Language, rights, activist, and the writer writer and former political prisoners.

Like Abdoubatif and Mariam, Abdou Weli also lived in Arumchi, Xinjiang's capital, working as a Uyghur language teacher and writer. But his dream was to start a string of Uyghur language kindergartens in Xinjiang so his own young daughter and other children could learn their mother tongue and keep the Uyghur language alive. This is our last point. This is our last front to stand. We will not compromise this. We shouldn't lose our language.

Abdawali launched a popular website about preserving the Uyghur language. But as China geared up for the people's war on terror, authorities turned on him. So, yeah, but at the end, yeah, unfortunately, yeah, everything changed. In August 2013, Abdou Ali was arrested and interrogated. Teaching Uighur, preserving Uighur culture was now seen as treason, an act of challenging party rule of Xinjiang. I was questioned, like, you are a separatist. You are going to build a country and it's your goal. I said no, I had never thought about it. It's really hard at the time to explain that I'm not the one who are interested in politics, who are interested in religious movement, or any kind of mother language movement. But I failed to explain at the end.

You'll be hearing more of Abdullah Ali later in the story, but he spent the next 15 months in a Xinjiang prison. In August 2016, Abdulatif and his family have been trapped in Xinjiang for nearly a year. Abdulatif decides to do one thing that's still allowed. He takes his family on a road trip through Xinjiang, driving from Arumchi in the north through Korla to the famous Uyghur city of Khotyn in the southwest. What they see shocks them.

We set off from Arumchi and drove into Korla. On the way, we saw such a huge number of tanks. I said to myself, what a horrible thing this is. No one dared to ask why there were so many tanks. Unbeknownst to him, Chinese authorities were preparing for something top secret. It would be even bigger than the people's war on terror. We'll be right back. This message comes from the Kresge Foundation.

Established 100 years ago, the Kresge Foundation works to expand equity and opportunity in cities across America. A century of impact, a future of opportunity. More at kresge.org. Back in Beijing, I was hearing whispers about something Uighurs called the Black Gate. People said more and more Uighurs were being sent in, but they didn't come out. So I started digging, and people spoke to me, despite the danger in doing so. Leaked documents, internal speeches, China's own state media reports, and investigative

work from journalists have since illuminated the militarization of the region and a vast network of detention camps, the black gates that China built to inter hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. These detainees can be seen in this video tied, their heads shaved, shepherded into trains. Well, it's probably the largest internment of an ethnic or religious minority since the Holocaust. How this happens is outlined in meticulous detail

in these secret documents, including... At first, China denied these camps existed, but later, under international scrutiny, authorities switched tactics and started calling them vocational education and Employment Training Centers. Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Government, Newspaper Translator,

Xu Guixiang In this Chinese state press conference, Xinjiang regional government spokesperson Xu Guixiang defends the camps, saying, The Xinjiang issue is not at all a democracy, human rights, or religious issue, but is rather an issue of opposing terrorism,

extremism, separatism, and interference. The vocational training centers are to eradicate terrorism and religious extremism at its roots. The idea is to identify any Uighur who's exhibited what the Chinese consider worrying signs they're sympathetic to extremism, and send them to be educated in Communist Party ideology and Mandarin Chinese, so they can be more, quote, Chinese. The scale of these detentions appears to have shrunk in recent years, but from 2017 to 2021,

the State Department estimates more than 1 million historically Muslim minority adults were detained. Leaked government documents highlight how arbitrary such detentions were from this period. For example, officials in southern Caracac County in Xinjiang detained people for reasons including men having long beards, women who wore a veil, and Uighurs who'd applied for a passport.

Kalbanor, the young mother you heard earlier whose family is openly religious, says that by 2013, daily life became nearly impossible. People began disappearing. There were a lot of soldiers patrolling around. Some ladies started to take their head coverings off. Many isolated at home instead of going out without coverings, for fear of police.

I was one of them. My life became very isolated. Anyone seen as a religious or intellectual figure in the Uyghur community was taken away. Abdoueli, the translator and Uyghur language teacher, had many friends who were sent to detention or worse to prison around this time. Many had served the Chinese government as professors or public servants, but now they were seen as traitors. I think the main reason is they are a pillar of Uyghur culture.

They are producer of cultural products. They produced historical novels, they produce songs and they produce like something related to Uyghur and something for Uyghur. They can unite, they can organize people. I think because of those reasons, because of their influence among the Uyghur population. Abdulatif and his family were still in Xinjiang as the first wave of detention started unfolding. But then a curious thing happened. Authorities gave Abdulatif back his Turkish passport.

Abdulatif says he was deported and told not to come back to China. However, Mariem and the children, Aysu and Lutfullah, couldn't go with him. Before he goes, Abdulatif tells his family he'll see them soon. He prays they'll get their passports back and they can reunite in Istanbul. He prays they'll get their passports back and they can reunite in Istanbul. In the last moments before I had to leave, Lutfullah went to the front door and suddenly burst into tears. He had never cried like that before.

When I said I was leaving, he ignored me. But after I got into the car, he sobbed and fell down on the floor. Once he is back in Istanbul, Abdul Latif is helpless to stop what happens next. Maryam's arrest and her disappearance into China's detention system. The children are gone too. Abdul Latif has no idea what's happened to them or how he'll ever get them back. But he decides to try anyway.

But he decides to try anyway. That journey, next week on Embedded. If you want to hear the next episode right now and before everyone else, go sign up for Embedded Plus. Embedded is the home for ambitious storytelling at NPR, and subscribing to Embedded Plus is a great way to support that work. Embedded Plus listeners will get to hear each episode of The Black Gate early, and they'll get to listen sponsor free too.

Go to plus.npr.org slash embedded, or find the Embedded channel in Apple to find out more. And a big thanks to everyone who has already signed up. Next week we will continue the story of Abd el-Latif Kuchar and the search for his missing family. The music you're hearing is a folk song called Nazugum by Uighur musician Abdalim Haid. He was arrested by Chinese authorities in 2017, reportedly in connection with a Uighur language song he had performed. In 2019, after rumors of his death, the government released

a video of the musician where he said he was in good health and under investigation for allegedly violating national laws. We should say it is currently impossible to verify Haight's well-being and whether he made the statements in the video under duress. Haight has not been heard from since. The Black Gate is a collaboration with NPR's international desk. If you'd like to hear more about the history of the Uyghur people, check out the episode, Five Fingers Crushed the Land, from our friends at the Throughline Podcast. We've linked to it in our episode description.

The Black Gate was reported by Emily Fang. Phoebe Wang produced the episode with help from Adelina Lancy and Hees. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt. Katie Simon is our supervising editor. Our supervising senior producer is Leanna Simstrom. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Didi Skanki and Vincent Nye of NPR's International Desk. Fact-checking by Naomi Sharp with help from William Chase,

mastering by Gillie Moon, music by Ramtin Arablui. Abduweli Ayyub provided help with translation and interpretation. Additional translation by Qasim Abdur Rahim Kashgar. Mamachan Jime, Mukhaddas, and Qasem Abdurahim Kashgar did our voiceovers. Thanks also to Lee Hale, Shirley Henry, Arianak Garib-Lee, Gregory Warner, Duri Buskaran, Vanessa Castillo, and the Kuchar family for sharing their story. Thank you.