"to my children it's as if we don't exist anymore; as if they are orphaned"   
-  Mihriban, a Uyghur woman who fled China in 2016  

Dear Jack,

Exiled Uyghur parents who fled persecution in China, but whose children are still held in state “orphanages” in China's Xinjiang region are enduring the torment of being separated from their loved ones, unable to contact them or even to know they are safe. 

Dilner, a Uyghur woman now living in Canada, doesn't know when or even if she'll be reunited with her children.

Dilnur, together with one of her daughters, left China in 2016 to escape harassment by the local police, who repeatedly searched her house and ordered her to remove her hijab (headscarf). Her other daughter and son were unable to travel with her, and she left them in the care of her parents.

In early 2017, Dilnur’s father was interrogated by the police and the family threatened with removal to an internment camp – a tactic to pressure her to return to Xinjiang. Encouraged by her father, Dilnur made the difficult choice to stay where she was. She has been unable to reach any family members since April 2017. 

China’s ruthless mass detention campaign in Xinjiang has put separated families in an impossible situation: children are not allowed to leave, but their parents face persecution and arbitrary detention if they attempt to return home to care for them.

Join us to call on China to stop using children as pawns for forced indoctrination and cultural assimilation in Xinjiang.

Since 2017, an estimated one million or more people from Uyghur, Kazakh and other predominantly Muslim communities have been arbitrarily detained in so-called “transformation-through-education” or “vocational training” centres in Xinjiang, where they have been subjected to various forms of torture and ill-treatment, including political indoctrination and forced cultural assimilation.

Amnesty International has spoken to Uyghur parents who had to flee persecution in China, and have since been completely cut off from their children – some as young as five years old. Many parents thought the 2017 crackdown would be temporary. Now they cannot return to China due to the threat of being sent to a “re-education” internment camp.

The mass detention campaign in Xinjiang has prevented Uyghur parents from returning to China to take care of their children themselves. It has also made it nearly impossible for them to bring children whose passports have been denied or confiscated out of China to be reunited with them.

Add your name to the global petition calling on China's President Xi Jinping to stop separating Uyghur families and allow children to be reunited with their parents overseas.

Sincerely,  

Hilary Homes 
Crisis and Tactical Campaigner 
Amnesty International