Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang separates Pakistanis from Uighur wives

Lawmakers have urged authorities to raise the issue of detention of 50 Chinese women

"Where is Mama?" screams Ahmed's 10-year-old daughter in the video that the father of the girl shows as he tries to collect himself.

The man, who chooses to stay anonymous while sharing his story with The Guardian, is a trader from Gilgit Baltistan. Like dozens of men from the region, he married a Chinese Uighur woman and the two have now been forcibly separated.

Ahmed fell in love with the woman on a work related trip to China's Xinjiang province. They eventually got married and had their first child. This is the fate of several Pakistani men from Gilgit who have married Uighur women from China.



Lawmakers hailing from the province have pushed authorities to take prompt action over the detainment of 50 Chinese women married to local men. Some of these detainees have been held in custody for a year on imprecise charges of extremism.

“It is absurd. We are well-off people and my wife is a housewife,” Ahmed told the Guardian, on condition of not publishing his real name. “Now our life is destroyed.”

Ahmed last heard from his wife on December 22 last year. He was perturbed by her medical condition as she suffers from epilepsy. The last words she said to him were “I miss you. We need your care now.”

Gilgit is important node in the investment intensive western route of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

A construction is under way on the CPEC, a £44bn, 1,990-mile trade route from Xinjiang through Gilgit-Baltistan to the southern coast.

However, Beijing has qualms about the Muslim population in its autonomous north western region. Fears about growing terrorist activities have sharpened since the 2014, knife attacks, whereby a man killed 29 people at a train station.

Since the attack, public displays of Muslim association have been forbidden. Men can no longer have long beards and parents cannot name their children Muhammad.

As a part of the 'security' policy, Uighurs have been placed in 're-education' camps in the province, reports Radio Free Asia. Men from the province say that their wives are being held in these camps, which are actually detention centres.

“Officials say my wife is at school, that she is learning Chinese and Chinese law,” Ahmed told the Guardian. “But school where you go in the morning, and you come home in the evening. You cannot call a school where a person is detained and has not come back for many months.” That, he said, is prison.

On the other hand, Xinjiang authorities are not renewing the visas of the Pakistani men.

A man told the local media that, despite being issued a visa from the Chinese embassy in Islamabad, he was barred from entering, at the border.

“I begged them to let me enter,” he said. “My wife, my two-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter were there.”

Ahmed's wife is only allowed to make a five-minute phone call, once in every 15 days. That too, is a privilege, since most families of detainees are not allowed that much contact.

According to Adrian Zenz, of the European School of Culture and Theology, the roundup has little to do with a genuine analysis of the threat posed by the women. Under the control of Chen Quanguo, a hardline leader appointed in 2016, the Xinjiang government has started to detain “anybody travelling internationally who is a Muslim”, with particular focus on a list of 26 countries, including Pakistan.



A member of the Gilgit-Baltistan assembly, Javed Hussain, told The Guardian that the protracted detentions were generating anger in the community. “We have heard nothing from the federal government since we passed a resolution demanding they take action,” he said, pushing for “concrete steps” to follow the matter quickly.

Yet silence could also come at a cost. If the government does not soon secure the release of their spouses, Ahmed said, the affected men would call for widespread protests, even shutting down the border.

The religious community would then “consider it a matter of honour” to get their wives back, he warned.

This article originally appeared in The Guardian.