Deafening silence meets every Uyghur pleading with the Chinese state for news of their loved ones caught up in the mass roundups ups and detentions since 2017.Seven long years have passed since the worst of the atrocities were unleashed on several million Turkic citizens in China’s north west and for Uyghurs who had to flee their homeland, the trauma has only intensified.
As the world remembers the United Nations International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on August 30, “Bitter Winter” revisits the story of Rizwangul NurMuhammad whose brother disappeared in 2017.
Mewlan NurMuhammad’s plight was raised by “Bitter Winter” four years ago. We caught up with his New Zealand-based sister again recently, to find her urgency and frustration growing amid Beijing’s stonewalling and an international community unmoved not only by her brother’s situation but that of hundreds of thousands of exiled countrymen and women who wait in agony for news of their relatives and friends.
The Uyghur diaspora community scattered across the globe is peppered with fractured families, separated spouses, and orphaned children, all desperate to talk to those they left behind and be reassured that they are still alive.
Rizwangul NurMuhammad, well known to “Bitter Winter“ for speaking up for Mewlan, now 38, since he disappeared in 2017, has been pushing every door at the highest levels to discover his fate, only to be blocked at every turn….
