Thread by @JimMillward

Whether #AbdurehimHeyit is alive or not, whether reports of his death, his torture are true, or the video of him speaking on 9 Feb is real, there are several takeaways from the incident which resulted in Turkey calling for the end to Chinese mass internment of Uyghurs 1/x

First, PRC admitted that #AbdurehimHeyit has been arrested and "is being investigated" in (after two years in prison)--for, it appears, lyrics in his songs. The Chinese superpower is panicked about a man playing a lute with just two strings. (Not even an electric guitar!) 2/x

How loud can those two silk strings be? This is not an expression of Chinese strength. It is an admission of weakness to have to lock up a poet and a musician--along with hundreds of thousands of others. China's own poets (e.g. Qu Yuan, Li Bai) would not approve 3/x

Moreover, is #AbdurehimHeyit known at all in China? Do authorities in CCP / PRC even realize that his music is heard, his lyrics translated into Turkish, Azerbaijani, Arabic, French, English? This could be Chinese cultural soft power, yet he is locked up / dead. 4/x

#BeltAndRoadInitiative endlessly references the Silk Road. There is nothing more "silk road" than a musician with a Central Asian lute--all such stringed instruments began in Eurasia. #AbdurehimHeyit embodies today's continuation of silk road culture. 5/x

And yet, PRC / CCP: you have put yourself in the position of arguing in weird videos whether the embodiment of silk road culture in #Xinjiang is alive or dead, while musicians and Turkic people grieve his fate across the "belt and road" countries. 6/x