Uighurs from outside China are traumatized. Now they have started talking about it
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In 2020, Xinjiang police began sending Aksu text messages via WeChat and WhatsApp. They pressured him into a partnership and threatened his family. Aksu never responded, so messages from more phone numbers arrived, with codes from many countries, not only from the Chinese mainland, but also from Hong Kong and Turkey.
In September, Aksu received a call from an old friend, a high school classmate who had shared a bedroom bed for four years. The friend, now a police officer, was polite. He recalled old memories and thanked Aksu for helping him. But it was clear that the purpose of the call was not pleasant. “He wanted to provide information,” Aksu says.
With things like that, Aksu was struggling to hold things together. Although DC had a positive change, he was grieving for his family and his brother’s death continued to be “tortured”. The phone call was the last straw. “I felt betrayed,” Aksu says. “I cried. I was saying, ‘How could that happen to me, how can someone do that?’ “
Later that day, he disappeared. He woke up the next morning when a colleague knocked on the door. Aksu missed a meeting and colleagues were worried. Aksu found that the anxiety was in force again. Such were the long and waking nights. A few days later, he disappeared again. “Then one day I had this stupid idea of suicide.”
“I was very worried,” Aksu says. “Like, ‘My God, why should I think about this?'”
He gave confidence to a colleague and this gave confidence to Chief Louisa Greve. Greve, the global defense director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, was taken to a popular Uyghur restaurant in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Aksu. He consoled her over the painful noodles and offered to ask her for advice.
Aksu was here before, of course. He was eager to try the therapy again, but he let himself be convinced. Greve introduced Charles Bates, a psychologist from Northern Virginia who volunteered with the Uyghur Wellness Initiative.
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