“The truth is not believable to someone who has not lived it in his muscles.” writes Jean Hatzfield in “Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak”. Where does this leave us, those who suffer the secondhand trauma of having innocent loved ones brutally targeted?
The emotional impact cannot be described by anyone who has not lived it. In fact, it would seem that many are unable to grasp the realities of the brutalities mankind is capable of. I am an Uyghur American, and unfortunately, every Uyghur knows the truth of genocide playing out in the modern age. And very few people have decided to stand with us. One of these courageous few has been Mesut Ozil. Words spoken on the lips of a public figure give us hope, and I am a person in need of such hope.
My mother, Dr Gulshan Abbas, a retired medical doctor, disappeared from her home in Urumchi in September of 2018. Her detention in the concentration camp was later confirmed through a media report. However, we still have no idea where she is being held or her current condition. For the past two years, I have been in what I can only describe as an agonizing limbo. I cannot mourn her, she may still be alive, but I cannot take comfort in that as I have had no news.
Most agonizing of all is that her kidnapper is identified and celebrated by many in the international arena and the ones who dare to speak out are punished. I am constantly confronted with this reality when I see the International Olympics Committee (IOC) defend Beijing host the Olympics, when Mark Cuban defends doing business with this regime and keeping athletes silent, and when the UN elects China to the Human Rights Council. “Don’t they know that turning a blind eye to persecution is despicable? Don’t they know that it is not the suffering of our brothers who are being tortured that is going to be remembered, it is our silence.”
When I saw Mesut Ozil’s message about Uyghurs, that moment, I thought “maybe the tables are turning, the world is finally noticing our pleas, they are seeing the faces of the disappeared, they are hearing our cries.” Sadly, the thrill and excitement was quickly met with enormous disappointment: Arsenal abandoned him. The possible reasons for this seem all too convenient.
A soccer player like him, with so much talent, expelled from his team. Was Arsenal so threatened by Ozil’s stance on Uyghurs? Are they so afraid to incur the anger of Chinese regime, the perpetrators of this genocide? Or is profit comes before what’s right, over human dignity? His punishment once again showed how the influence of the CCP has spread beyond the national security sphere and into all aspects of life and even entertainment all over the world. Beyond just controlling the narrative on their crimes within China, they seek to control it in foreign universities, in Hollywood, with the NBA, and now this.
The reality of the hold that the Chinese regime has over the nations of the world is an enormous threat to the values that make us human – love and care. Mesut Ozil did just that- he cared about his Uyghur brothers and sisters – who in large part have suffered alone. He cared about the Uyghur children who are traumatized in ways unimaginably barbaric, who have been forcibly removed from familiar care while their parents are in these concentration camps, who are taught to forsake their ethnic identity and mother tongue.
He spoke out because he found the disgusting lies that CCP is presenting about “lifting the population out of poverty” and solving the “disease” of Islam” is absurd. He called out Muslim countries because he knew that forcibly sterilizing women, administering mandatory birth control, forcing mothers to have abortions and coercing Uyghurs girls into marriage to atheist Han Chinese men are actions that are against every principles of Islam and simply put, against the human conscience.
Mesut Ozil’s own cost hit home hard for me, because my mother also became a victim of the Chinese regime’s campaign to silence those who dare to speak the truth, a well known tactic right from the communist playbook. But we are stronger because of people with convictions – people like Mesut Ozil. The world needs more people like him. When a person is willing to stand with the truth in the face of great personal cost, we know they are worth listening to.
As an Uyghur, I long to be able to point to examples of similar courage here in the United States. When will we see our own citizens show similar moral backbone? What I want to see is that the leaders of the democratic world take its rightful place as a true defender of humanity by leading the charge against the demonic murderers who are running the Chinese regime. I ask the international community not to be counted with China’s shame. Justice will prevail.
(The writer's mother Dr Gulshan Abbas languishes in a concentration camp by China for the last many years)
