abide the reports they were hearing. while we weren t politically involved, we saw a lot of acquaintances and friends disappear, never to be heard from again. so it was sort of a wake up call again of where we were living. after moving to washington, dc, julie took a job as a uyghur rights activist, and she made a big decision to testify very publicly at the uga tribunal, an unofficial hearing set up to examine claims of human rights abuses in xinjiang. ad the regular tribunal. uyghur. it s been valuable advocacy wise, but also made them, i think, infuriated in a lot of ways. we certainly saw that the floodgates were opened in a sense, and i started to receive a lot of digital harassment, utilising photos that had clearly been taken from my previous chinese, wechat account that i wasn t using any more, and then being disseminated alongside photos of an individual that was not me
each other, and the system. many patriotic uyghurs are leaving istanbul. many young people are no longer involved in the uyghur cause. people no longer trust one another. they run away from one another. china s plan is working in restaurants, in streets. i m alone. i have no existence other than a solitary one. really focus on that. it s really emphasising. david says this isn t a coincidence. turkey is seen as having grown closer to china in recent years and questions have been raised about its commitment to protecting its uyghur community. the more dependent a country on investment from china, i the more likely it is to cooperate or turn a blind eye to transnational repression. but china isn t only targeting people in countries where it has economic supremacy. julie millsap is married to a chinese national. they lived in china for over ten years but decided they couldn t