Carries a hope for freedom under the Norwegian moon

Omer is one of almost 100 Uighurs who came to Norway in September to seek protection. This is his story.

From around September 5 to 25 people with Chinese passports were the largest group of asylum seekers in Norway, according to statistics from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI).

The UDI has confirmed to Dagen that the refugees are Uighurs, a Turkish, Muslim people whose homeland is in Xinjiang province in western China.

Transit

Omer Memettursun (31) bought a ticket between the resort town of Antalya in Turkey and Belgrade in Serbia, a country that does not require visas for Chinese citizens. The flight had a transit in Oslo, and he could therefore seek asylum in Norway. He is now at the National Center for Refugees in Råde where his entire application process will be completed.

His testimony of what is happening in China is unique, says Weli Ayup, a «City of Refuge»-writer located in Bergen, Norway, and himself a Uighur.

Deported to China

Weli Ayup fights for the right of his people to maintain the Uighur language and culture. He is also interested in documenting the stories of Uighurs who have been in internment camps in China.

Chinese authorities have described the detention of more than one million Uighurs over the past four years as a fight against terrorism. However, researchers say that innocent people are often thrown into camps for regular activities such as traveling abroad or attending religious gatherings, according to NTB, The Norwegian News Agency.

Wanted to document the story

The «City of Refuge»-writer considers Omer Memettursun to be an important source of information because he has been in a Chinese prison and met Uighurs who have been deported from Egypt and placed in internment camps in China.

Ayup himself was in contact with Memettursun while the latter lived in Turkey because he wanted to document his story. Dagen has been given access to this document.

For fear of his own safety, Memettursun has not spoken out before:

– Now he is in Norway and can testify, says Ayup.

Asylum in Germany

On a Turkish-registered phone, Memettursun tells Dagen that he and his two brothers grew up with their mother. His father left China in 1996, when Omer was six years old, and sought asylum in Germany.

Since then he has been working for the World Uighur Congress. Among other things, the organization aims to highlight human rights violations against the Uighurs.

A kind of genocide

Turkey, where Memettursun has lived for the past three years, has traditionally given special treatment to minorities such as the Uighurs, due to their Turkish ancestry.

In 2015, President Erdogan even said that Chinese policies against Uighurs was a kind of genocide. He promised to provide protection to all Uighur refugees, according to a 2021 report from Landinfo, an agency which collects and analyzes information on social conditions and human rights in various countries for the Norwegian immigration authorities.

The New Silk Road

After 2015, however, the favourable policies towards the Uighurs in Turkey have changed. One of the reasons may be that Turkey is eager to become part of the Chinese «Belt and Road» project, also referred to as the «Silk Road of the 21st Century»: China’s ambition is to build high-speed trains and motorways that can secure trade between Europe, Africa and Asia.

Turkey hopes that this will bring much-needed foreign investment to the country, and thus the authorities have become far more cautious in criticizing China's persecution of the Uighurs in recent years.

Not safe

Sources report extensive surveillance by Chinese authorities of Uighurs living in Turkey. They appear to focus on recruiting Uighur refugees to spy on their fellow refugees, according to Landinfo.

Memettursun no longer felt safe in Turkey, he says, and in August he decided to get away. His goal was any country in Europe. With borrowed funds and some savings, he first made it to Serbia where he tried to go to both Amsterdam and Paris on transit tickets, but failed and was sent back to Turkey.

Pure Luck

Memettursun did not give up. He finally made it to Oslo on a flight that left the holiday destination Antalya in September. It was the second of only a handful flights that had Uighurs onboard. They all sought asylum in Oslo.

– I'm lucky. I made it to the country that we normally think is completely impossible to get to, he says.

His wife, Zulkemer, remains in Istanbul. Their 2.5-year-old child was born in Turkey and does not have a passport. His parents-in-law are Turkish citizens and live close to his wife and son.

– Wanted to see my father again

Memettursun’s problems began after the 31 year old made a trip to Egypt in the spring of 2016. For a short period in 2015-2016, it was relatively easy for Uighurs in China to be issued a Chinese passport, Memettursun says.

– Ever since I was little I had wanted to see my father again. Now the chance presented itself, and I left China just days after I got my passport.

A friend of his brother ran a restaurant in Cairo and Memetturrsun worked as a chef in order to pay for his ticket.

Reunion in Turkey

Memettursun worked in Egypt for three months before his two brothers also joined him from China, and soon all three were reunited with their father in Turkey.

After his father left China, he had tried to obtain family reunification in Germany, but neither his wife nor his sons had been able to get passports in China and therefore had not been able to leave the country.

– When we met in Turkey it was the first time in 20 years, and we were happy, says Memettursun, who despite Uighur tradition does not have his father’s first name as his surname.

– He was branded as a political dissident and my brothers and I were therefore forced to take my grandfather's first name as our last name.

Wanted to make money

The young chef returned to Egypt after meeting his father. He wanted to make more money.

His brothers, who felt obligated to their mother, returned from Turkey to China, but before long one of them sent him a message asking him to come home. The local authorities wanted to talk to him, his brother said.

Arrested by the police

On September 12, 2016, the then 26-year-old man flew back to Xinjiang, China. He says he was apprehended by the police as soon as he arrived at the airport in the province capital, Ürümqi. He was then taken to Custody Prison no 1 where he was asked to strip off his clothes. A form of medical examination was carried out before he was given prison garb.

– The guards put foot shackles and handcuffs on me, and between the two there was also a chain that made me unable to walk upright. It was very uncomfortable, says Memettursun, who was forced to walk like this for 15 days.

Then, one Friday after lunch, he was summoned. A policeman was to escort him back to his hometown Goma in Hotan in southern Xinjiang.

Various prisons

For the next six months, Memettursun was largely left alone, with the exception of one day where he was questioned by the security service, he says.

After that he was arrested again, and was held in altogether three detention centers. First locally at his hometown in Goma, then to the county detention center in Hotan, and finally to custody of the security service.

Hooded and taken away

On March 18, 2017, he says he was asked to report to the local police station, Nishandar. With a black hood over his head, Memettursun was taken to a nearby hospital for a new health check before he was detained. He says the prisoners were treated as murderers and beaten with belts while they were waiting to be shaved.

– It was very brutal.

The police wanted to know why he had traveled to Egypt and whether there was no work in the European countries.

He had to write and submit his so-called «criminal report» which eventually filled 70 pages.

– The police said: You filled in the wrong information. If you had written the truth, you would have been released, he says.

Beaten with iron wire

In May of the same year, he was taken to Hotan County detention centre, where four officials interrogated him. Two were from the Chinese security service (Ministry of State Security) and two from the National Security Department in the Police (Ministry of Public Security), he says.

Memettursun says they claimed that he had been in contact with a friend of his father, and asked him to sign this alleged «crime». He refused, he says.

– I said I would not sign even if they killed me.

Memettursun says that he still has scars on his buttocks after the blows he received with an iron wire and says that he had to go to hospital for treatment while he was detained.

Rounding up all who had been abroad

In September 2017, Memettursun was transferred to a remand prison operated by the security service. He had not had the opportunity to shower while he was in the county detention centre in Hotan and his body was full of parasites, he says. Here he remained until January 2018.

– I learned that in this prison they gathered everyone who had been abroad, and that they had a special police team that conducted the interrogations.

Helping his mother get to Mecca

Everyone who was placed with him in the cell had been in the dreaded detention camps, Memettursun says. In addition to the toilet, there were two surveillance cameras in the room, and the police used to walk on the cell roof every ten minutes.

Memettursun says that one of the five in his cell said that his alleged crime was to have helped his mother go to Mecca. Another one said he had been forced to sign that he had produced bombs.

People were screaming

From other cells, Memettursun could hear people screaming, and it scared him. During interrogations, he repeated that he had worked as a chef in Egypt, but said that he also had wanted to learn a little about his religion if the opportunity arose.

They love such answers, he says, about the police.

Receiving teaching about one’s religion, especially in a Muslim country abroad, is in itself considered a serious crime in China, he says.

He adds that a crime considered even worse, was the fact that Memettursun had had contact with his father, a man who had traveled to Germany to seek asylum and fight for the Uighur cause.

Memettursun was also asked whether he had learned how to make bombs.

He says he was hung by his arms so that his feet barely touched the ground and then beaten. When he fainted, he was thrown into the cell, he says. After two days, when they prepared new interrogations, he capitulated.

– I said: I plead guilty. You can sentence me to 20 years in prison.

Crime

According to Memettursun, those who came from the camps to the detention centers had been taught how wonderful China and communism were. Everyone had to write "self-confession reports".

– They contained completely ridiculous things, like for instance having watched a video or listened to a tape with religious instruction, he says.

The prisoners were then told that they would be released.

– But it was just a game, claims Memettursun, and says that these prisoners later received up to 20 years in prison for the so-called criminal acts they had committed many years earlier.

Forced labour

According to Landinfo's report, called «China: Xinjiang Internment Camps» (2019), the Chinese government has established a very comprehensive system of camps in Xinjiang. They are allegedly vocational training centers where Uighurs and other Muslim minority people are taught Mandarin, law, politics as well as a vocation so that they can take part in work life and avoid radicalization.

Landinfo states that it is likely that people are sent there involuntarily, and that mental and physical abuse probably also occurs, although it is impossible to say to what extent. There is also a risk of being sent to forced labor at nearby factories.

According to the report, «the system is probably intended to transform the Muslim population in Xinjiang into loyal citizens of the People's Republic of China, shedding them of any competing loyalties to Islam, their own culture or the larger Turkic world.»

Jihad

Omer Memettursun confirms that he met Uighurs who had been deported back to China. He says they had all been convicted of the same crimes: that they had learned to make bombs, had joined the Islamic Party of East Turkestan and had supported jihadism.

– They were sentenced to long prison terms of around 20 years, but the accusations are lies. They are all innocent. They do not even call Xinjiang by its original name, East Turkestan, which in the ears of the Chinese government is proof of a person’s dangerous separatist ideas. They always said: We are Chinese, he claims.

The torture stopped

In total, he was in custody of the security police for four months.

After he himself signed a confession, the torture ended immediately.

– I was asked: Brother, do you want a cigarette? Are you hungry?

But the questions and accusations against the father continued:

– They said: A dog is better your father. We want nothing more from your father than to open his mind. We would be happy if he returned, changed his ideas and could live with you.

His brothers would suffer

Memettursun himself has not been in an internment camp, only in the mentioned detention centers.

– I did not have to be in the camps. Since I had been abroad, my crime was clear, says the 31-year-old.

There he was instructed by the security service to work on his dad and convince him to report on the diaspora Uighur community. Memettursun says that he was told that if the two did not agree to work for the Chinese authorities, his brothers would suffer.

– They threatened that unless I cooperated, my two brothers in China would be killed, he says.

Scared

He was released in January 2018.

– They bought new civilian clothes for me, he says.

According to the asylum seeker he was brought from the detention center to the 24th floor of a hotel in Ürümqi for five days. He was given detailed instructions on how to proceed.

The security police then asked him to travel to Dubai. There he was to take a taxi to a specific market and buy a SIM card. He was then to download the Chinese mobile application WeChat and then contact his father.

–They said traveling to Germany would be too obvious, he explains.

Called his father

Memettursun exchanged the 3,000 yuan he received from the security police into the local currency, the dirham, and did what he was asked to do.

Half an hour after Memettursun sent an sms, his father called back. Memettursun explains that since he knew the phone was tapped, he spoke to his father as if he were in agreement with the Chinese authorities, but shortly afterwards he called his father him again from another phone and explained the situation.

– I said: You must not come to Dubai and you must get me out of here, Memettursun says.

Audio file with torture

His father bought a ticket to Turkey for him, and Memettursun settled in a large city, as most Uighurs in the country have done: There are a number of shops and restaurants run by and for Uighurs. In addition, there are sports clubs, cultural centers and schools that teach Uighur language.

While living in Istanbul, Memettursun received a heart wrenching audio file from the security police in China: One of the brothers had been arrested and was begging his father to cooperate and thus save his two sons and their families

He contacted Radio Free Asia, an American, government-funded news service that broadcasts radio programs to audiences in Asia. The news media has a large Uighur staff, and Memettursun gave an extended account of his experiences. with the radio station, and. the audio file was brodcast in its entirety.

– Afterwards, I have not been able to get in touch with my brothers.

China has consistently denied all allegations of harsh treatment of the Uighur population. In January this year, the US State Department accused China of genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang province.

– The allegations of genocide are nothing more than fabrications and the conspiracy of the century, Xu Guixiang, the deputy director of the Xinjiang propaganda department, said at a news conference following the US accusations.

Stopped

In September almost 100 Uighurs have applied for asylum in Norway.

Last week, however, all Uighur passengers who tried to board the same route that Memettursun had arrived on, were detained in Turkey, according to «Zumret Tursun», a Uighur and a Norwegian citizen.

It happened regardless of whether they had valid Chinese passports and tickets, she claims.

The 51-year-old, who does not use her real name for fear of her security, has been the point of contact for many fleeing Uighurs, including among other channels through Facebook. She has been living in Norway since 2010.

«No comment»

Dagen has made an effort to find confirmation as to the face that uighur passengers have been stopped in Turkey.

The airline Norwegian's communications director, Eline Hyggen Skari, writes in an email to Dagen that due to privacy reasons the company cannot publish information about their passengers. She refers to the Police Immigration Unit regarding details of entry.

Dagen has also asked the Police Immigration Unit for a confirmation.

"We have no comment on this today," said senior communications director Daniel Drageset, replied on the 29th of September.

The UDI has not replied to the questions from Dagen, but the figures for the last week of September are clear: Suddenly there were no more registered asylum applications from Chinese citizens.

«The fact that in a short time so many Uighurs living in Turkey have now come to Norway at the same time, or are trying to come to Norway (...) may indicate that this is organized, which has caused the airline and the Norwegian authorities to react” is the response from Beate Ekeløve-Slydal, political adviser in the human rights organization Amnesty International, in an email to Dagen

«All countries have a legitimate right to know who is in their territory and who is allowed to enter the country, but Norway's and other countries' visa requirements for citizens from a number of countries will undoubtedly make it difficult for many refugees to travel legally and safely in order to apply for asylum in another country. But once you have come to Norway and state that you want to apply for asylum, you cannot be denied the right to have your asylum application processed.», she adds.

«Just look up at the moon»

Memettursun remembers well the words uttered by Chinese police while he was still in his home country:

– They said: We will find you wherever you are. You can just look up at the moon if you doubt it.

He says that he has been very scared.

– But now I am in the free world, he says.