Even those Uyghurs who manage to reach Turkey must then deal with their uncertain status there and the loss of all contact with their families in Xinjiang.
“I haven’t heard my mother’s voice for 10 years,” says Hasan Imam, a Uyghur refugee who now works as a truck driver in Turkey.
He was in the same group as Nilooper, who was captured at the Malaysian border in 2014.
He remembers how the following year the Thai authorities tricked them about a plan to deport some of them to China. He says they were told some of the men would be moved to another facility because where they were was too crowded.
This came after some women and children were sent to Turkey and, unusually, men in the camp were also allowed to speak to their wives and children in Turkey on the phone.
“We were all happy and full of hope,” Hassan says. “They picked them off, one by one. At that moment, they had no idea that they would be sent back to China. It was only later, through the illegal phone we had, that we found out from Turkey that they had been deported.”
This filled the other prisoners with despair, Hassan recalls, and two years later, when he was temporarily transferred to another camp, he and 19 others committed a great escapeusing a nail to make a hole in a ruined wall.
Eleven were recaptured, but Hassan managed to cross the wooded border into Malaysia and from there into Turkey.
“I don’t know the condition of my parents, but it’s even worse for those who are still in detention in Thailand,” he says.
They fear that they will be sent back and imprisoned in China – and they also fear that this will mean harsher punishment for their families, he explains.
“The mental strain is unbearable for them.”
