My own personal holocaust: A young girl describes her experience in China

[Uyghurtilek]

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My own personal holocaust: A young girl describes her experience in China

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 | 03:54 PM ET



Bio: Sakine Zulang is a 17 year old high school student. She currently lives in Toronto but was born in Turkey. She speaks four language: Turkish, French, English, Uyghur. She considers herself a Uyghur Canadian.

My take: What is imperialism? What is genocide or holocaust? When you’re just 17 and growing up in Canada you don’t believe there are such ugly things or events going on around you. You believe with your entire heart that the world has learned from its past and mostly you have hope that the future will hold happy things for everyone. A 17 year old shouldn’t have to experience disappointment or knowledge that this world is full of unfairness.

I am writing this because in the summer of 2009, I travelled to China and experienced one of the worst moments of my life. I remember going on the plane so excited, filled with anticipation, eager to arrive and experience the Uyghur culture. Unfortunately my trip in East Turkistan, my homeland, was occupied by China and was dark and dangerous.

July 5 was the day I went out with my mom to the city in Urumqi to shop and look around. We were just shopping for cultural Uyghur clothes when we heard loud voices outside. When we looked outside I saw many Uyghur men, most of them young, with a Chinese national flag protesting peacefully. Seeing a peaceful protest by the Uyghurs made me feel proud. Because I was expecting Uyghurs to speak up against the Chinese rule since it is visible that Uyghurs have a very low social status in their own land compare to the Han Chinese.

Soon, without anyone realizing, the Chinese army abruptly arrived on the streets and began instantly shooting the protesters. As people panicked, the army shot them as well, and murdered people were on the streets of Urumqi. Crowds of Uyghurs attacked Chinese solders as well but they were quickly defeated since they were empty-handed. As people panicked so did we, and soon we found ourselves running for safety. We went into a telephone store with a group of people. The employees in the store closed down the lights and locked the doors. There was a giant glass window in this store and we were able to see everything that was happening.

In front of us there was an endless amount of people dead on the streets. The Chinese soldiers were multiplying even more and they even came with tanks. The streets were now filled with blood and people who were full of fear. Uyghur men and women that had been either shopping or just for having fun were stripped down by Chinese soldiers and thrown into in army vehicles. I was frozen. The thing that broke our hearts the most, something which I will never forget until the day I die, is this little boy around five to six years old lost and panicking and screaming his lungs out for his mother.

Out of nowhere a Chinese soldier threw a bomb at the little boy, and all I could see now was just a dead child with his flesh torn out. By 4 a.m., the streets that were full of life were turned into a dead city. You couldn’t see anyone outside except for soldiers. As time passed, more people who were hiding came out to run home through back roads so as not to confront the Chinese solders. It was the most horrifying thing to have to jump over dead bodies to be able to run home. When we reached home it was around 5 a.m. We were locked in the house with little food or water for 10 days as ethnic Han Chinese started to attack Uyghurs.

On the 10th day with the help of a relative we managed to get tickets to another city. On the way to this new city, the bus was stopped by Chinese police many times. Every time they chose some random Uyghur man to come down from the bus and to be taken away. They tried to take my brother as well since he had big black eyes with no Chinese features, but we were fortunate to be Canadian and he remained with us. When we arrived in the city, no Uyghur men were left in the bus and city that we arrived at was filled with many soldiers.

Although I am now back safely in Canada, and have found out how lucky I am to be a Canadian, I can still hear the screams of that little boy killed before my eyes. Dead bodies, naked detainees, bloody streets, angry faces are always turning around in my head and make me sleepless.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/citizenbytes/2009/10/my_own_personal_holocaust_a_yo.html