When I left my kids five years ago, I was in a hurry. I did not have time to grab souvenirs or toys. All I took was a single family photo.
At the time, my husband and I felt we had no choice. As Uighurs in Xinjiang, the Chinese authorities constantly harassed us and demanded that we give up our passports. There would be ‘consequences’ if we did not. 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 managed to get visas to go to Italy, but we were afraid that there would be questions at the border if we left at the same time with all our children. So we decided to take my then youngest son, who was still breastfeeding, with us and leave the other four with their grandparents until they could join us later. They were then between seven and 11 years old.
If we had not left China at that moment, I do not know if we could ever have done it. Yet we did not imagine how much worse things would get in Xinjiang. After we came to Italy, the authorities started targeting our family. My mother was taken to an internment camp and my father was interrogated several days before he was taken to 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 family members could not take care of them because they were afraid that they would also be sent to camps.
The school soon noticed that there were no parents or guardians at meetings, so they asked the government to deal with these ‘orphans’. They were sent to a prison-like school with 24-hour supervision. They call these places ‘orphanages’.
My children are called ‘orphans’, but I’m still alive.
In November 2019, my father passed away. But it was also the month we received good news, when the Italian government issued a permit to bring my children to Italy. Informing our children was a risk due to the oversight of their communication, but we managed to do so in a video call in March last year.
To obtain their visas, they must travel to the Italian Consulate in Shanghai, 5,000 km away. They were too young to undertake such a journey alone, and we could not find anyone to accompany them because of the risks.
One night in May, Chinese police questioned my children for two hours. They asked why they kept in touch with their parents. They said it was dangerous and threatened to take them to an internment camp at the end of the school term. The children were scared. My son called us every day and pleaded for us to be saved. He said he is 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 came to Shanghai. But when they got there, they were denied access to the Italian consulate. Two days later, the police caught them, and they were sent back to the orphanage.
Until then, I never gave up hope that we would see our children again. But now our situation is desperate. China has detained my children, and if it wants to harm them, it can.
It is a risk for Uighurs to express themselves 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 have not stopped thinking about it for a moment. No one can really understand what I am feeling unless they experience it.
I do not know what my children are doing now. I’ve seen footage of orphanages posted online, so I know they watch Chinese propaganda movies and sing ‘red’ songs in school. When I watch these videos, I think of my children and the way they are raised. How they are confined in a small classroom, learning things they do not want, separated from their parents and how they should miss us.
My baby was born in Italy, and we have another one born here. Sometimes we hold them in our arms and tell them about their siblings in Xinjiang, and we cry. They ask when they will meet their siblings, and I do not know what the answer is. At night I wake up from nightmares and pray to Allah to bring the children back to us. In those times, the only thing that comforts me is the photo of them that I grabbed when I rushed out the door five years ago.