One year has passed since the Urumqi Fire. Maybe the world has forgotten, but we have not. On that day, Uighurs experienced a tragedy.
On Nov. 24 last year, 44 people lost their lives in a fire that broke out in an 18-story building in Urumqi where Uighurs lived. The majority were mothers and children, whose screams coming out of the fire spread through surrounding buildings and were seen across the world via the Internet. Nobody could help them, as the region was under lockdown due to China’s “zero-COVID-19” policy, and the doors of buildings and houses were locked.
Moreover, as the parents and husbands of some of those burned in the fire had been incarcerated in prisons and camps, the people trapped in the building lacked the physical strength to break down the doors.
People in neighboring buildings heard the screams and were heartbroken, but helpless to save them, as they were also under siege. Chinese firefighters were unable to approach the building, because it had been fenced and roped off as part of the lockdown measures.
As a result, hoses could not reach the building. China’s military and police forces did not show the same courage and skill in saving these helpless people as they did in the “terror” incidents in the region.
China kept the identities and numbers of those who lost their lives in the tragedy secret. The questions of Uighur rights advocates were left unanswered: Were the victims’ bodies buried according to Muslim traditions? Was the tragedy reported to family members in prisons and camps and were they included in the death ceremony? Have families been given compensation or assistance?
So far we only know the identity of a mother and her three children among the 44 people who lost their lives that day, from Radio Free Asia reporting. They were Qembernisa, 48; Shehide, 13; Abdurahman, 9; and Nehdiye, 5. The reason this is known is that Qembernisa’s other two children are studying in Turkey.
On this day last year, 44 people burned and suffocated in the fire for three hours and died while mothers held their babies in their arms, children ran from one corner of the room to the other, back and forth between walls.
The world might have forgotten this scene, but we have not and we never will. They were a vulnerable part of our community who experienced the disaster of the concentration camp. Even those not in the inferno in Urumqi that night were burning in the fire of the drama of arrested parents and their relatives. While Qembernisa and her three children were burning, her husband, Memeteli Metniyaz, and son, Ilyas Memeteli, were serving jail time in Urumqi Prison. We are unable to hold China accountable for this disaster, but we believe that history will one day.
We do not forget that in these terrible days, the Turkish government expressed its condolences to our people, and the European Parliament called on Beijing to make a clear statement about the tragedy and hold those responsible accountable. However, there was no response.
On this painful anniversary, we remind the world community of this truth: If the investigation of the murder is entrusted to the murderer, the field will be covered by the seeds of hostility, not the light of justice.
The Urumqi fire tragedy is a typical example of the Uighur genocide. We call on every individual and institution that see themselves as a part of humanity to remember this scene and learn the lessons they deserve.
Kok Bayraq is a Uighur observer. Rebiya Kadeer is a former president of the World Uyghur Congress.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past