Embedded: The Black Gate

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. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:16Rund Abdelfatah?

  You're listening to Throughline from NPR. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  And I'm Ramtin Arablouei. 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.

• 0:35Rund Abdelfatah?

  The US and some European countries are calling it a, quote, "cultural genocide." And in 2021, NPR's China correspondent Emily Feng started following one Uighur family, the Kuchar family, whose lives were torn apart by this crackdown.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:03Rund Abdelfatah?

  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.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  Three years ago, I had a long conversation with a man named Abdullatif Kuchar. 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. Abdullatif 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 Uighurs live. Maryam was exhausted and on edge because Chinese government minders,

• 2:04Speaker 03

  they call themselves relatives, had been keeping a close eye on her every day.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  The relatives would come and live with us sometimes. They would even sleep there at night and have breakfast with us in the morning.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  So it was only in the evenings, right before bedtime, when Maryem usually had some privacy.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  She would wash the kids and then she would call me.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  But as I chatted, Maryem heard a knock on the door. It was 10:00 PM. Abdul Latif felt a surge of fear.

• 2:38Speaker 04

  They don't arrest people during the day. They only arrest them at night.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  And on the other end of the line, he could also hear Maryem's fear.

• 2:47Speaker 04

  She was so scared, but she told me she had to open the door. So she put the cellphone away. I heard some noises, the sound of something breaking.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  After that, silence. Abdul Latif tried calling Maryem back. Nothing. So he frantically called family. Maryem's cousins and sisters, who live nearby in Xinjiang. They got to his home early the next morning.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  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 Maryem was there, but they were not allowed to meet her.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  The police told them that Maryem had been arrested. So Abdul Latif's cousins decided to take in the Kuchar's young children. Their son, Lutfala, who was just four years old, and daughter, Isu, who was six.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  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.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  After that, Abdul Latif lost all contact with his family. He had no idea where Maryem and the children were or what had happened to them. Years later, I reached out to the police in Xinjiang about Maryem, 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 Abdalatii feared had happened to his family.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  So he decided to try to save them against all odds.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  We'll be right back.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from the Carter Center. Since 1982, the Carter Center has gone where the need is greatest, waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope. Far Away Up Close: Global Stories from the Carter Center is a new documentary-style podcast about the people who do this difficult, often dangerous, work and what drew them to it, told in their own words. Follow Far Away Up Close: Global Stories from the Carter Center wherever you listen.

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• 6:11Speaker 05

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• 6:16Speaker 03

  Abdalatif Kuchar now lives full-time in Istanbul, Turkey. Still, it took him time and courage before he could tell his story. It's a traumatic experience for him because the Chinese state actively intimidates Uighurs, even those outside of China. At first, Abdalatif 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.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  But ultimately, Abdullatif 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 Abdullatif 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.

• 7:23Speaker 06

  They promised autonomy for the Uighur, the same pledge made to the Tibetans.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  In the 1930s and 40s, Uighurs and other ethnic groups had resisted Chinese occupation. They wanted their own nation-state. Abdullatif Kuchar's grandparents were part of that independence movement.

• 7:41Speaker 04

  My grandfather joined the war and was even the right-hand man of Hoja Niyas.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Hoja Niyas, a famous Uighur leader. But after Communist China took control, the Kuchar family history of resistance became a political stain. Abdullatif's father wasn't allowed to attend university until he joined the Communist Party and gave up Islam.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  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.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  Abdullatif remembers constant conflict at home between his parents. Finally, his father sued his mother for a divorce.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  He was forced to appear against his wife in court.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  It was a horrible public affair. During the proceedings, Abdullatif's father turned over his mother's prayer rug as evidence of a strict Muslim faith. Later, he abandoned the family. Abdülatif’s mother decided to leave China permanently. In 1986, she took Abdülatif and his older brother Abdurachip and moved to Turkey. The boys became Turkish citizens. There are now an estimated 50,000 Uighurs living in Turkey because the language and culture are so similar. But the Kucha 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.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  In 1990, when they were in their early twenties, 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 Abdurachip put it, “it did not happen all at once.”

• 9:30Speaker 07

  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.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  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 Abdülatif’s optimism. He met Mirjam Ahmet. She was from his hometown.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  We are both from the city of Kucha, but we met at a party in Urumqi.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Abdülatif says they’d hang out at his restaurant in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. It was a place where transplants from Kucha liked to go and eat. Abdülatif and Mirjam were married in 1998. After their marriage, Abdülatif says he tried to convince Mirjam 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.”

• 10:33Speaker 04

  She always loved her country, so she didn’t want to leave it. She didn’t want to leave behind her Chinese nationality.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  So Abdülatif tried splitting his time between Turkey and China. A few months in Istanbul, then half a year in Xinjiang with Mirjam. 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.

• 11:05Speaker 07

  It's 8:52 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.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  On 9/11, terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The attacks changed the world. And although Mirjam and Abdalatiev didn't know it at the time, the attacks kicked off a series of dramatic changes in China that would eventually lead to Mirjam's arrest. It began with Chinese authorities interrogating Abdalatiev every time he arrived from Turkey.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  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 Kucha, 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?"

• 12:01Speaker 03

  The US 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. Book stands 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.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  And it begins cracking down on Uighurs who openly practice their faith.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Kalbnoor, a young Uighur mother — she has that I not use her last name — was living in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar as the crackdowns intensified. Kashgar was known for its Uighur culture and religious expression. Kalbnoor told me how authorities began to harass her family.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  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.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Uighurs said this kind of treatment was widespread. Uighurs said they were passed over for state jobs and paid less than their Han Chinese counterparts, China's majority ethnic group. Chinese officials say Uighurs 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.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  In July 2009, all that growing resentment finally exploited with deadly consequences in Xinjiang's capital, Arumqi.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  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.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  After the riots, China rounds up and arrests at least 1,000 and perhaps far more young Uighur men. Abdullatif and Mirjem were in Turkey at the time, and they watched the events with alarm. But like many Uighurs, they hoped the violence and the state repression would pass. They continued to build their lives. In 2011, their daughter Isu was born, and in 2013, their son Lutfilah. But things were not getting better. Things were getting worse. The same year Lutuila was born, several Uighurs rammed a car into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, wounding dozens of people and killing two pedestrians.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  Chinese authorities investigating the car crash in Tiananmen Square on Monday have named two suspects.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  China immediately declared it a premeditated terrorist attack orchestrated by Uighurs 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 Kengming 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 have been responsible for some attacks in China during the 2000s. But there was 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.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  In 2014, China launched the People's War on Terror.

• 16:31Speaker 06

  China is waging a war on terror after a series of deadly attacks, many of them in Xinjiang.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  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. Maryem's Chinese passport was confiscated. Like most other Chinese Uighurs, by the end of 2016, she is 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.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  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.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  In part because Abdul Latif and his family don't speak English, as I was reporting this story, I relied on a Uyghur activist and translator for help. You can hear him asking Abdul Latif questions. His name is Abdouweli Ayup, 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?

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Language rights activist and the writer and former political prisoners.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Like Abdul Latif and Maryam, Abdouweli also lived in Urumqi, 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.

• 18:30Speaker 04

  This is our last point. This is our last front to stand. We will not compromise this. We shouldn't lose our language.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Abdouweli 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.

• 18:50Speaker 04

  So, um, yeah, but at the end, yeah, unfortunately, yeah, everything changed.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  In August 2013, Abdouweli was arrested and interrogated. Teaching Uyghur, preserving Uyghur culture, was now seen as treason, an act of challenging party rule of Xinjiang.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  I was questioned, like, you are a separatist. You are going to build the 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.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  You'll be hearing more of Abduweli later in the story, but he spent the next 15 months in a Xinjiang prison.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  In August 2016, Abdullatif and his family have been trapped in Xinjiang for nearly a year. Abdullatif 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 Uighur city of Hotyn in the southwest. What they see shocks them.

• 20:21Speaker 06

  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.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  Unbeknownst to him, Chinese authorities were preparing for something top secret. It would be even bigger than the People's War on Terror.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  We'll be right back.

• 20:52Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  This message comes from the Carter Center. Since 1982, the Carter Center has gone where the need is greatest, waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope. Far Away Up Close: Global Stories from the Carter Center is a new documentary-style podcast about the people who do this difficult, often dangerous, work, and what drew them to it, told in their own words. Follow Far Away Up Close: Global Stories from the Carter Center wherever you listen.

• 21:22Speaker 05

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• 21:53Speaker 03

  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 hundred of thousands of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

• 22:28Rund Abdelfatah?

  These detainees can be seen in this video, tied, their heads shaved, shepherded into trains.

• 22:35Speaker 04

  Well, it's probably the largest internment of an ethnic or religious minority since the Holocaust.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  How this happens is outlined in meticulous detail in these secret documents, including a record of a 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.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  In this Chinese state press conference, Xinjiang Regional Government spokesperson Xu Guixiang defends the camps, saying, quote, "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."

• 23:24Speaker 03

  The idea is to identify any Uighur who's exhibited what the Chinese consider worrying signs or 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 Karakat County in Xinjiang detained people for reasons including

• 24:04Speaker 03

  men having long beards, women who wore a veil, and Uighurs who'd applied for a passport. Kalbinor, the young mother you heard earlier, whose family is openly religious, says that by 2013, daily life became nearly impossible.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  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.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Anyone seen as a religious or intellectual figure in the Uyghur community was taken away. Abdou Elie, 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.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  I think the main reason is they are a pillar of Uyghur culture. They are producer of cultural products. They produce 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.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  Abdul Latif and his family were still in Xinjiang as the first wave of detention started unfolding. But then, a curious thing happened. Authorities gave Abdul Latif back his Turkish passport. Abdul Latif says he was deported and told not to come back to China. However, Maryem and the children, Isu and Mutfala, couldn't go with him.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Before he goes, Abdul Latif tells his family he'll see them soon. He prays they'll get their passports back and they can reunite in Istanbul.

• 26:15Speaker 06

  In the last moments before I had to leave, Mutfala 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.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Once he is back in Istanbul, Abdullatif is helpless to stop what happens next: Miriam's arrest and her disappearance into China's detention system. The children are gone, too. Abdullatif has no idea what's happened to them or how he'll ever get them back. But he decides to try anyway.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  That journey, next week on Embedded.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  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/embedded or find the Embedded channel in Apple to find out more. And a big thanks to everyone who has already signed up.

• 27:44Speaker 07

  Next week, we will continue the story of Abdullatif Kucar and the search for his missing family. The music you're hearing is a folk song called "Nazugum" by Uyghur musician Abdalim Hae. He was arrested by Chinese authorities in 2017, reportedly in connection with a Uyghur-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 Hae's well-being and whether he made the statements in the video under duress.

• 28:29Speaker 07

  Hae has not been heard from since.

• 28:35Speaker 07

  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.

• 28:53Speaker 07

  The Black Gate was reported by Emily Feng. Phoebe Wang produced the episode with help from Adalina Lancy and Hayes. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt. Katie Simon

• 29:03Speaker 00

  Is our supervising editor. Our supervising senior producer is Leanna Simstrom. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to DeeDee Skanky and Vincent Ni of NPR's International Desk. Fact checking by Naomi Sharp with help from William Chase. Mastering by Gilli Moon. Music by Ramtin Arablouei. Abdulweli Ayup provided help with translation and interpretation. Additional translation by Kasim Abdurahim Kashgar. Mamachan, Jimme, Mukaddas and Kasim Abdurahim Kashgar did our voiceovers. Thanks also to Lee Hale, Shirley Henry, Ariana Garab Lee, Gregory Warner, Duri Buskarin, Vanessa Castillo and the Kuchar family for sharing their story.

• 30:15Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.