When I left my children five years ago, I did it in a hurry. I didn’t have time to get any souvenirs, no toys. All I took was a single family photo.
At the time, my husband and I felt that we had no choice. As Uighurs in Xinjiang, the Chinese authorities constantly harassed us and demanded that we hand over our passports. There would be “consequences” if we didn’t do it. There was also a strict birth control policy. They wanted to do a “body check” on me to see if I was pregnant, and I was.
We had obtained visas to go to Italy, but we feared that there would be doubts at the border if we went out with all our children at once. We then decided to take my youngest son, who was still breastfeeding, and leave the other four with their grandparents until they could join us later. They were between seven and 11 years old at the time.
If we hadn’t left China at that time, I don’t know if we could have done it. Even so, we had no idea how things were going to get worse in Xinjiang. After we arrived in Italy, the authorities started targeting our family. My mother was taken to an internment camp and my father was interrogated for several days before being taken to the hospital. He was 80 years old.
Meanwhile, the children had no one. According to the Chinese government, they were the children of “traitors”. Our other relatives could not take care of them because they feared that they too would be sent to the fields.
The school soon realized that no parent or guardian was present at the meetings, so they asked the government to look after these “orphaned” children. They were sent to a prison-type school with 24-hour surveillance. They call these places “orphan camps”.
My children are called “orphans”, but I am still alive.
In November 2019, my father passed away. But it was also in that month that we received good news, when the Italian government issued a license to bring my children to Italy. Informing our children was a risk because of the surveillance of their communications, but we were able to do so in March last year through a video call.
To obtain the visa, they would need to travel to the Italian consulate in Shanghai, 5,000 kilometers away. They were too young to make this trip alone and we were unable to find anyone to accompany them due to the risks.
One night in May, the Chinese police interrogated my children for two hours. They asked why they kept in touch with their parents. They said this was dangerous and threatened to take them to an internment camp at the end of the school term. The children were afraid. My son called us every day, begging to be rescued. He said he was on a list of people going to an internment camp. With the Italian visa expiring in August, we had to let the children go to Shanghai alone.
We gave them instructions and, with the help of strangers and contacts, they arrived in Shanghai. But when they got there, they were barred from entering the Italian consulate. Two days later, the police arrested them and they were sent back to the orphan camp.
Until then, I had never lost hope of seeing our children again. But now our situation is hopeless. China has detained my children and, if it wants to harm them, it can.
It is a risk for Uighurs to speak openly about the human rights violations we are suffering, but we tell our story in the hope that someone will help us. In the five years since I left my children, I haven’t stopped thinking about them, not for a minute. No one can really understand what I feel unless they experience it.
I don’t know what my kids are doing now. I saw videos of orphan camps posted online, so I know they watch Chinese propaganda films and sing “red” songs at school. Whenever I watch these videos, I think of my children and the way they are being educated. How they are restricted in a small classroom, learning things they don’t want, separated from their parents, and how they must miss us.
My baby was born in Italy, and we have another one that was born here. Sometimes, we hold them in our arms and tell them about their brothers and sisters in Xinjiang, and we cry. They ask when they are going to meet their brothers, and I don’t know the answer. At night, I wake up with nightmares and pray to Allah to bring the children back to us. At that time, the only thing that comforted me was the picture of them that I took while running out the door five years ago.