Today's #Olympics2022 hero spotlight is placed on #Uyghur scholar Adil Ghappar [Kariz] whose condition and well-being have been unknown since 2017.
I met Adil in 2014 having been introduced to him by Rahile Dawut. I was under his wing at Xinjiang Normal University as I taught a short-term course in his department.
Adil remained extremely witty and optimistic despite tighter restrictions on his research. He already published a monumental contribution to understandings of the richness of Uyghur religious rituals and expressions
We maintained email contact during the year & met in Urumchi during the summers to discuss research and life. He was working on a way to conduct research on Uyghur networks (mehelle, mosque community, bazaar, & mazar) without drifting into "sensitive" topics
@EricTSchluessel my colleague, friend, and mutual friend of Adil, reported his strange and sudden disappearance from academia in summer 2017. On June 28, I wrote him, but, for the first time, did not receive a reply.
Even though the CCP has tried to silence our friend Adil, we can make surethe repetition of his name reverberates throughout these games and until his well-being is known.
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In celebration of the anniversay of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's Nobel Prize, here are some of the songs about him that I've translated (be sure CC is on for English subtitles):
From the China Islamic Association’s #Uyghur language official imam manual: imams must advise the people to avoid weeping loudly and shedding tears at the cemetery. Why this instruction exposes CCP hypocrisy on “extremism”. A thread.
First, some background. The book, A Handbook for Imams of the New Era, was published in 2005 and republished at least once in 2009 by the China Islamic Association and #Xinjiang University Press. It was originally written in Chinese and translated into Uyghur.
Organized under the United Front, the China Islamic Association is the main gov't organ on matters dealing with Islam overseeing activities that “benefit religious harmony, ethnic unity…” and it “contributes to the great revitalization of the Zhonghua minzu (Chinese nation)."
In celebration of HHDL's @DalaiLama's 87th birthday, here is a list of songs I've translated in which brave musicians in Tibet take serious risks making tribute to him
The headshots are unnerving...very important collection indeed. but these are not the first photos inside detention/re-education centers w/o official authorization. I've made images public for several years now @ProjectXinjiang.
Also need to be precise w/ terms. although detention centers 看守所 are part of the "re-education" process (and one facility for the three-types people 三类人员)--and some may pass through them before re-education or prison--they aren't "transformation through education" centers
Today, I'm shining @NBCOlympics #OlympicGames spotlight for the first time @shahitbiz on my friend Ekber Ebeydullah, who has been detained since 2016
I met Ekber in Beijing in 2010. He was studying at university after four years in the Xinjiang Class boarding school. He is extremely bright, fluent in four languages (Uyghur, Turkish, Chinese, and English).
After graduating, he went to Turkey for post-graduate studies. Upon returning home in 2016 for a relative's wedding, he was detained. A mutual friend told me the news summer 2017 in Urumchi. Like many others, his crime was being #Uyghur.