As Beijing Olympics begin, exiled Uyghurs fight for families oppressed in China

ISTANBUL — Surely his son would know his voice, Abdurahman Tohti thought.

But the answer that came over the phone nearly crushed him.

"I have no father," the boy replied in Mandarin, not in Uyghur, his mother tongue.

"The Chinese government trained him like that," said Tohti. "It's a feeling I cannot describe."

The boy was only 2 in 2016, when he left Turkey with his mother and grandmother to visit their homeland in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Mass arrests began while the child was there. More than a million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other mostly Muslim minorities were forced into indoctrination camps. Tohti, who had been living and working in Istanbul since he left China years earlier, lost contact with his entire family.

Five years after China began the campaign of mass incarceration, cultural erasure and coercive labor, most Uyghurs abroad remain cut off from their families. Many kept quiet through the first years of the camps, afraid that contacting their loved ones would draw fresh persecution. But Uyghur exiles have since grown bolder — staging protests and filing legal complaints — in calling attention to their people's plight and taking a stand against repression.

Now, as the for the Winter Olympics, Uyghurs, along with Tibetans, Hong Kongers last week urging governments, athletes and sponsors to not legitimize China's abuses.