AILSA CHANG, HOST:
All right, the Beijing Winter Olympics are here.
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CHANG: Events have already begun. And with the opening ceremonies kicking off on Friday, China is again in the spotlight. But that brings attention to more than just the Winter Games.
MINKY WORDEN: Every country commits human rights abuses.
CHANG: Minky Worden is director of global initiatives for Human Rights Watch.
WORDEN: But certainly, it is the case that there has not been a host government committing crimes against humanity. This is really a new low.
CHANG: NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman reported that, in the weeks leading up to the Beijing Olympics, activists have ramped up their criticisms of the host country, with much of the messaging focused on China's policies towards Uyghurs in the western region of Xinjiang - policies that the U.S. government and a London-based tribunal have called genocide.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Uyghur Muslims, a minority group from western China, have been speaking out at the tribunal's hearings, witness after witness saying things like punishments included savage beatings, sleep and food deprivation. Police officers took the children away by force.
CHANG: But for Olympic athletes speaking out against these abuses could mean danger. The International Olympic Committee, or IOC, allows athletes to express their views outside of competitions and ceremonies, but they're also expected to obey local laws.
ROB KOEHLER: The IOC has not come out proactively to indicate that we will protect and make sure everyone is safe that decides to speak up.
CHANG: Rob Koehler leads the advocacy group Global Athlete, and his advice is that athletes should not test the waters.
KOEHLER: We're advising athletes not to speak up, and that's a sad statement that we have to say that.
CHANG: Some countries, including the U.S., have opted out of sending government delegations to the games. But despite all of this global attention, it is still quite difficult to get a clear picture of what exactly is happening in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has been arresting and detaining Uyghurs. New reporting from NPR gives us a look into what life has been like for Uyghur children.
LUTFULLAH: (Through interpreter) The class monitors hit us if we cried or made us stand still facing the wall. They hit us with a ruler, usually.
CHANG: CONSIDER THIS - China has been forcibly separating Uyghur families and sending their children to state boarding schools. Coming up, two children who made it out give us a view into what happens inside.
AYSU: (Through interpreter) They pulled my hair and beat me. All my hair fell out when I was at school.
CHANG: From NPR, I'm Ailsa Chang. It's Thursday, February 3.
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CHANG: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. Our Beijing correspondent, Emily Feng, has been reporting on China's treatment of Uyghurs for years, but this is the first time that she's been able to speak with children who were sent to state boarding schools. She'll take the story from here.
AYSU: (Non-English language spoken).
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: In their sparkling clean Istanbul apartment, 8-year-old Lutfullah Kucar and his 10-year-old sister Aysu Kucar play a game of chess together.
ABDULLATIF KUCAR: (Non-English language spoken).
AYSU: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: After the game ends, with their father close by, they tell NPR about the 19 months they spent in a Chinese state boarding school after they were forcibly separated from both parents. They were only 4 and 6 years old at the time.
LUTFULLAH: (Non-English language spoken).
ABDUWELI AYUP: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: The person asking questions is Abduweli Ayup. He's a Uyghur writer and educator who co-reported this piece with me. At the school, Aysu and Lutfullah say each day began the same way. They rose early, had their beds inspected to get breakfast, then had class. They had to memorize and recite political slogans at each morning's Chinese flag-raising. Lutfullah says they were punished if they spoke out of turn or if they spoke their native Uyghur language.
LUTFULLAH: (Through interpreter) The class monitors hit us if we cried or made us stand still facing the wall. They hit us with a ruler, usually.
FENG: The children also described how they were beaten by older students assigned to monitor them. Here's Aysu.
AYSU: (Through interpreter) They pulled my hair and beat me. All my hair fell out when I was at school.
FENG: When Aysu and Lutfullah did not follow orders or didn't learn quickly enough, they said they were sometimes put into stress positions.
AYUP: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Ayup asks them to demonstrate. The two children get into what they call the motorcycle position. They stretch two arms in front and bend their knees in a half squat, a position they sometimes had to hold for several minutes. In November 2019, 19 months after they were brought to the school, Aysu and Lutfullah were finally released to their father. He says they were malnourished, traumatized and could not speak a single word of Uyghur or Turkish, their mother tongues. They only spoke Chinese.
KUCAR: (Through interpreter) Back in Turkey, to calm themselves down in the car, on the plane, they sang songs in Chinese about grandfather Xi Jinping and father Wang Junzheng, the former security chief for Xinjiang.
FENG: NPR was able to identify the school Lutfullah was sent to, directly located just south of downtown Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. It is part of an expanding network of boarding schools set up in Xinjiang ostensibly to improve educational access. But according to Chinese government documents and Uyghur families, thousands of Uyghur children have also been sent to these schools after their parents were either arrested or detained, even if they have relatives willing to take them in. At the schools, the children are taught Mandarin Chinese and Chinese political ideology. This effort to inculcate loyalty to the Chinese state and erase Uyghur language is part of what the U.S. government has deemed cultural genocide against the Uyghurs. Here's Secretary of State Antony Blinken on "60 Minutes" last year.
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ANTONY BLINKEN: We see a genocide taking place against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, efforts to indoctrinate them, to deny their culture, to deny their heritage and various repressive and violent actions directed against them because they're Uyghurs.
FENG: In my five years reporting on Xinjiang, I've heard hundreds of stories of parents trying to find their children, all unsuccessfully. But Lutfullah and Aysu are unique. They are the first-known Uyghur children to make it out of one of these Chinese state boarding schools in Xinjiang and are sharing their story publicly. And their rescue story is extraordinary. It begins with their father, Abdullatif Kucar. He was born in Xinjiang but fled to Turkey in 1986 to escape political and religious repression against Uyghurs. In the 1990s, he returned to Xinjiang, now as a Turkish citizen, to start a leather and textile business. In 1998, he met and married another Uyghur, Meryem Aimati, Lutfullah and Aysu's mother. Then in 2017, the family's life was upended. That year, under Chinese leader Xi Jinping's personal direction, Beijing began detaining and mass arresting Uyghurs, especially those with a religious background or international travel. In Kucar's case, China canceled his visa, deported him and barred him from returning. Then authorities came for Meryem and the children.
KUCAR: (Through interpreter) On the phone, she told me that police were knocking at the door, then hung up. The next day, relatives found the apartment turned upside down and shocked kids alone at home.
FENG: At first, Aysu and Lutfullah were taken in by relatives, but in February 2018, they were arrested too, part of a detention and security campaign China says was needed to thwart terrorism and stop a string of deadly attacks by Uyhgurs in China. The two children were sent to two separate state schools. From his home in Turkey, Kucar and his elderly mother began petitioning the Turkish government to help because the kids, through Kucar, are technically Turkish citizens. And astonishingly, his petitioning was successful. In late 2019, he's allowed to return to China and pick up his children.
KUCAR: (Through interpreter) When the Chinese police brought my two children out, they ran to me as fast as a bullet from a gun. It was the hardest moment of my life. Aysu knocked me to the ground and hugged me.
FENG: Back in Istanbul, a doctor diagnosed the children with calcium and iron deficiencies. They were thin and timid. During therapy sessions, they drew violent images, and they had persistent nightmares.
KUCAR: (Through interpreter) For the first four months back home, they would gnash their teeth, kick in bed and shout, no, I will not do that in their sleep. We had to keep their lights on constantly.
FENG: NPR corroborated details of the Kucar's travel to and from China through visa stamps, travel paperwork and identification documents. Interviews with medical and educational professionals corroborated the children's account. The Turkish Embassy in China referred all questions back to the Kucar family. China's Foreign Ministry and the Xinjiang government did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Although Kucar was allowed to retrieve his children, he was not allowed to bring his wife home. Authorities in Xinjiang told him she had been given a 20-year prison sentence for separatism, akin to treason. Kucar, Lutfullah and Aysu were given 15 minutes to say goodbye to her at a hospital near the prison.
KUCAR: (Through interpreter) She was thin to the bone and had lost all her hair. I grabbed her skeletal hand and saw the dark scars the handcuffs had left on her wrists. I thought to myself, what's the point of living anymore, but resolved to live for the children.
FENG: That was more than two years ago. The family hasn't been able to contact Meryem since. The kids are now going to art therapy and intensive language training. One of Lutfullah's teachers told NPR he is finally talking more and playing with other children. Kucar says what keeps him going is prayer and a sense of duty to keep his shattered family together. He knows they're one of the luckier families. At least he and the kids are together. But Kucar fears for Meryem, and he worries that Lutfullah and Aysu may never get to see their mother again.
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CHANG: That was NPR Beijing correspondent Emily Feng.
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CHANG: You're listening to CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Ailsa Chang.
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