This Uighur Journalist Is Bravely Fighting a Homegrown Cultural Genocide
Gulchehra Hoja has dedicated her life to protecting her people, who are being tortured for their religion and identity
In November 2017, 23-year-old Amanet Khan (name changed for safety reasons), a Chinese graduate student studying in New York City, knew something was wrong when her father stopped responding to her texts on WeChat, a popular messaging app in China. Gradually, even her mother’s texts slowed down to one-word responses.
“My conversations with my mother got even stranger when I shared with her how much I was enjoying living in New York City, how it was less polluted than China. She said things like, ‘there is no place better in the world than China.’ I knew then that she was really worried about the government tracking our family,” Khan explained.
Uighurs can be arrested under spying and terrorism charges just for contacting relatives and friends living outside of China.
A few weeks later, Khan’s mother told her to delete her two sisters off of WeChat. In June 2018, her last remaining link to her family, her mother, also disappeared off the messaging app.
