My own personal holocaust: A young girl describes her experience in China
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 | 03:54 PM ET
Bio: Sakine Zulang is a 17 year old high school student. She currently lives in Toronto but was born in Turkey. She speaks four language: Turkish, French, English, Uyghur. She considers herself a Uyghur Canadian.
My take: What is imperialism? What is genocide or holocaust? When you’re just 17 and growing up in Canada you don’t believe there are such ugly things or events going on around you. You believe with your entire heart that the world has learned from its past and mostly you have hope that the future will hold happy things for everyone. A 17 year old shouldn’t have to experience disappointment or knowledge that this world is full of unfairness.
I am writing this because in the summer of 2009, I travelled to China and experienced one of the worst moments of my life. I remember going on the plane so excited, filled with anticipation, eager to arrive and experience the Uyghur culture. Unfortunately my trip in East Turkistan, my homeland, was occupied by China and was dark and dangerous.
July 5 was the day I went out with my mom to the city in Urumqi to shop and look around. We were just shopping for cultural Uyghur clothes when we heard loud voices outside. When we looked outside I saw many Uyghur men, most of them young, with a Chinese national flag protesting peacefully. Seeing a peaceful protest by the Uyghurs made me feel proud. Because I was expecting Uyghurs to speak up against the Chinese rule since it is visible that Uyghurs have a very low social status in their own land compare to the Han Chinese.
Soon, without anyone realizing, the Chinese army abruptly arrived on the streets and began instantly shooting the protesters. As people panicked, the army shot them as well, and murdered people were on the streets of Urumqi. Crowds of Uyghurs attacked Chinese solders as well but they were quickly defeated since they were empty-handed. As people panicked so did we, and soon we found ourselves running for safety. We went into a telephone store with a group of people. The employees in the store closed down the lights and locked the doors. There was a giant glass window in this store and we were able to see everything that was happening.
In front of us there was an endless amount of people dead on the streets. The Chinese soldiers were multiplying even more and they even came with tanks. The streets were now filled with blood and people who were full of fear. Uyghur men and women that had been either shopping or just for having fun were stripped down by Chinese soldiers and thrown into in army vehicles. I was frozen. The thing that broke our hearts the most, something which I will never forget until the day I die, is this little boy around five to six years old lost and panicking and screaming his lungs out for his mother.
Out of nowhere a Chinese soldier threw a bomb at the little boy, and all I could see now was just a dead child with his flesh torn out. By 4 a.m., the streets that were full of life were turned into a dead city. You couldn’t see anyone outside except for soldiers. As time passed, more people who were hiding came out to run home through back roads so as not to confront the Chinese solders. It was the most horrifying thing to have to jump over dead bodies to be able to run home. When we reached home it was around 5 a.m. We were locked in the house with little food or water for 10 days as ethnic Han Chinese started to attack Uyghurs.
On the 10th day with the help of a relative we managed to get tickets to another city. On the way to this new city, the bus was stopped by Chinese police many times. Every time they chose some random Uyghur man to come down from the bus and to be taken away. They tried to take my brother as well since he had big black eyes with no Chinese features, but we were fortunate to be Canadian and he remained with us. When we arrived in the city, no Uyghur men were left in the bus and city that we arrived at was filled with many soldiers.
Although I am now back safely in Canada, and have found out how lucky I am to be a Canadian, I can still hear the screams of that little boy killed before my eyes. Dead bodies, naked detainees, bloody streets, angry faces are always turning around in my head and make me sleepless.
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Comments
Gordon Chamberlain
Toronto
I am sorry to hear of your experience in China. Unfortunately such incidents and your trauma has been a part of human history.
5,000,000 people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the past 8 years. Most important is to find some one you can confide in about the visions you are coaping with. It is called Post Tramatic Stress.
The key is to find out what coaping technique works for you. Part of the motivation of the leadership of China is immense fear of loosing control in a country of 1.6 billion people as history has show how bad things can get when revolts occur.
Posted October 20, 2009 08:03 PM
al
gta
i think this is a pure genocide.....chinese r killing uyghurs day and night...phones,internets r still blocked..and the world is ignoring us........plz help uyghur people...get the truth get involve..
i am really sorry that u went through all these sadness and hurror...
Posted October 20, 2009 08:26 PM
david
Vancouver
Let's stop buying stuff from China and start making it at home again. We should not in anyway be supporting this totalitarian state.
And by the way Free Tibet !!!!
Posted October 20, 2009 08:56 PM
Oh my god!
Inida
This is the chinese communist way of finishing the business. As long as chinese occupy Tibet and Xinjiang, there will be no peace for the poor native population.
Posted October 21, 2009 02:24 AM
mark
montreal
we can only hear the real stuation of urumqi just from witnesses like Sakine. No phone or internet communication with uyghur region under the blockage of chinese gov since two months is leaving us under dark.
I am sure that the reality of urumqi mascre will be uncover when the uyghurs are able to communicate with outside of world. until that we can not confirm the chinese ads blaming of uyghur about july5 riots.
Shame on china.
Genocide is crime.
Posted October 21, 2009 05:08 AM
Ted
TO
"Although I am now back safely in Canada, and have found out how lucky I am to be a Canadian"
The vast majority of native born North americans don't realize how lucky they are to be born in the west.
But lets face it though the west is still engaged in the same stuff covertly, many corporations have US backing killing others around the world with impunity.
As ugly as the world is only we the people can change it.
Posted October 21, 2009 06:11 AM
jarrod
vancuover
Thanks CBC... SAVE UYGHUR! SHAME ON OMNI TV!
Posted October 22, 2009 03:37 AM
Alex
Vancouver
Thank you for writing about your experience in China. I am so glad you arrived home safe.
As for China, I don't know what to say. It's all already been said. And yet, Communist China shows no sign of relenting. It knows no humility for actions which it deems to be rightful, and any criticism directed at it is dismissed as "foreign meddling".
Foreigners couldn't possibly understand how difficult it is to run such a big country, and anyway they don't have 5000 years of history behind them so what can they know anyway? Excuses, excuses, excuses. What can we do?
Posted October 22, 2009 01:02 PM
DirtRoadScholar
Gordon
I'm waiting for the wretched little trolls (aka China apologists) to explain this one away; it's very hard to argue with first-hand, eye-witness accounts.
More's the pity for people standing by and letting this occur 'in the interests of not upsetting our Chinese trade partners'.
Things that violate human rights are wrong regardless of done by whom or where. Wrong is wrong even if labels are thrown of 'Western meddling' or some such nonsense-the citizens of the world are my brothers and sisters and I must speak out against injustice against them, just as I would expect them to speak out against injustice against me.
Posted October 22, 2009 03:00 PM
Dana Chan
Toronto
As a 17 year old, I am sorry you had to experience such horror.
I question the judgement of the adults who thought it was safe to bring you and your brother there.
As Mr. Chamberlain suggested, study human history to better understand why governments do what they do.
I am hoping that the study of East Turkistan history will help you better understand why this is happening.
Posted October 22, 2009 04:47 PM
A Friend
GTA
Sakine, sorry to hear you had to witness such a traumatic incident. But it's only thanks to witnesses like you we can have the actual truth of what's being told.
I congratulate you for sharing your experiences with the rest of us and letting us find out how bloody and cruel China can be. Great job!
Shame on China!
Free East Turkistan!
Posted October 23, 2009 06:06 PM
petepete
California
I am sure this has not been the first time the Han have attacked the Uyghur. The Uyghur protesters should have known better than to incite the anger of the Chinese army.
What good does it do but lead to such horrible consequences?
Posted October 25, 2009 12:47 AM
A child's Mother
NS
You are strong, brave and a humanitarian to share your experiences.Your right as a global community we should have by now learned from the past. Hope you do something good with your passion and experience.
Posted October 29, 2009 09:21 AM
angus robinson
What a horrible ordeal? This is something that should make us all feel lucky to live in the security that Canadian citizenship affords.
However, it should also make us ashamed of the Canadian government. The Harper government, while more vocal about China's human rights record than previous governments,hasn't taken any concrete punitive actions that might influence China's behavior.
On the contrary, China is now our third biggest trading partner and has invested heavily in Tar Sands development. China is in more of a position to exert pressure on our foreign policy and not the other way around.
As such, we cannot expect the Harper administration, with its propensity to put profit above all other considerations, to follow up its rhetoric with policy any time soon. In the mean all we can do is attack this kind of rhetoric for what it is: a sham.
Posted October 29, 2009 12:04 PM
Roy Haddock
Canada
This is a fantasy story. Nothing but anti Chinese propaganda.I doubt the authenticity of both the story and the identity of its purported author.
I was there in Xinjiang from spring until September, and although there were riots and violence on the part of BOTH sides, this is an exaggeration to the extreme. All of you are being hoodwinked by this person.
Go and see for yourself.
Posted November 8, 2009 06:36 AM
Peter Evanchuck
Human rights seem to not be rights to all but a select few. Palestinians suffer incredible deprivation in their own land, Ukrainians lost 10 million thru methodical starvation by Stalin's general Kalminkov, and now i read this terrible experience of a people dominated by brutal, aggressors who handle dissenters with a bullet, a bomb or a club.
Politics stink - perhaps as Gulliver wrote we should let the politicians fight among themselves and leave the rest of us to get on with living, loving and learning.
Posted December 26, 2009 02:17 AM