Not Answering the Phone", the sad song of overseas Uighurs

Washington —
On a sunny morning, Aziz Isa Elkun walked the streets of London with her little daughter's hand and told her the story of the free bird.

The audience initially thought that this was an ordinary father with his daughter to go to school, but the conversation between the two soon revealed that thousands of overseas Uighurs could not "fly back" their mood in the hometown of Xinjiang, China.

Producer Alken said to his daughter in a short film based on a true story, "Don't Answer the Phone," "Daughter, look at the birds." "They fly freely on the tree; they don't understand what is the border." If I am a bird at the moment, I will fly back directly to my hometown."

the film

The film goes on to talk about the homesickness of overseas Uighurs. They want to know the news of their loved ones in their hometown of Xinjiang.

Alken met the French Nice girl Lucy. Lucy also took her daughter to school and used her mobile phone to talk with her mother who was celebrating her 80th birthday.

Alken said to his new friend Lucy, "You can have a video call with your mother, I am envious."

Alken told the Voice of America that his father died in October 2017. He does not know if the 76-year-old mother is still alive because she has not answered the phone since the beginning of 2018.

"I only heard that my father's physical condition has deteriorated. I applied for a visa to the Chinese Embassy in London on humanitarian grounds, and I can apply for a visa." His last call with his mother was in January 2018. The mother told him at the time that the Chinese police ordered her not to answer the calls from overseas, otherwise "the consequences are conceited."

Alken said, "I was very surprised and very angry and sad. I called her again after a week, but no one answered." He then named the film "No Calls".

Alken came to British political asylum in 2001 and is now a British citizen living in London with his wife and two children. He is a researcher and writes for the University of London, and he is actively pursuing the rights of the Uighur minority.


Alken said that the film premiered in Washington, DC last month would allow more people to understand the suffering of the Uighurs in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region suffered from the brutal suppression of the CCP.

Alken said, "I just hope to convey a voice through this film." "Many people don't know the situation of Uighurs at the moment. Uighurs living abroad are trying to understand the current situation of their families. Many people have not passed the family for many years. The words."

Uighur problem

Xinjiang, located in northwestern China, has nearly 22 million people and is the largest Muslim gathering place in China. There are an expected 13 million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities.
The Chinese government has detained more than one million Uighurs and other Muslims in recent years and has placed them in the so-called re-education camp. To this end, the Chinese government is receiving more and more international criticism.

Chinese officials say these places are nothing more than vocational training centers, and they must take these measures in order to combat the "three evil forces" of "terrorism, religious extremism and separatism."

Ethnic cleaning

But many experts and human rights groups believe that the government's crackdown is a systematic ethnic cleansing.

Rebecca Clothey is the Director of Global Studies at Drexel University and a researcher on Uighur issues. She said that Chinese officials cut off the links between Xinjiang Uighurs and the outside world to cover up local actions.

She said that this kind of isolation has had a serious psychological impact on Uighurs living abroad.

Clos said to the Voice of America, "Local Uighurs are afraid to talk to outsiders because they fear being accused of talking to 'terrorists.'

New monitoring measures

A recent Human Rights Watch report said the Chinese government deployed a surveillance system to monitor popular communications applications such as WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram and Virtual Private Networks. The report says the new system also closely tracks interpersonal interactions, tracking people who are supervised by the police or who have just acquired a new phone number.

Human Rights Watch said that during the crackdown campaign in China, the authorities collected biometrics for all people between the ages of 12 and 65 in Xinjiang, including DNA samples, fingerprints, eye scans and blood types.

Alken told the Voice of America that despite the severe pressure from the authorities, he still believed that the people would maintain their ethnic identity. He said that his film would enable Uighurs who grew up overseas to remember Xinjiang and remember the land that Uighur called "East Turkistan."

At the end of the film, her daughter told Elken that she told her teachers and classmates that she was from “East Turkistan, a country that has no independent country”.

Alken said, "My smart daughter, your father is proud of you." He said, "You know that your father can't live without it. This is his identity. This is his whole. East Turki is an occupied country, belongs to your father, belongs to his children and children's children.