My escape from China's mass arrests

When Uyghurs started disappearing into 're-education camps', I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be detained. So I got ready to run

- Tahir Hamut Izgil

ONE DAY IN MIDMarch 2017, I had just finished giving my weekly lecture on film directing at the Xinjiang Arts Institute in Urumqi when my wife called. She told me that our friend Dilber had arrived from Kashgar, in south-west Xinjiang, and that she was headed to the front gate of the Arts Institute to meet her. Dilber was the hospitality director of a famous Kashgar hotel. While shooting the television series Kashgar Story the year before, our film crew had stayed at the hotel for two months. We chatted often with Dilber and had a number of meals together; by the time we left Kashgar, we had got to know each other well.

Over the phone, my wife, Marhaba, told me that Dilber's son, who was studying acting at the Arts Institute, had been drinking and picking fights in his dorm, and that the institute was threatening to expel him. Dilber had hurried to Urumqi to plead with school administrators for her son to be allowed to continue his studies.

When I reached the front gate, I saw Dilber standing alone. As I was greeting her, Marhaba arrived. We had barely begun catching up when Dilber burst into tears. Assuming that she was crying for her son, we tried to comfort her. But Dilber was not worried only about her son. She told us what had been happening in Kashgar the past few days.

Mass arrests had begun. The wave of arrests was so immense that detention facilities in the city-police station lockups, prisons, holding centres, labour camps, drugdetox facilities - had been quickly overwhelmed. Within days, numerous schools, government offices and hospitals had been converted into detention and re-education centres, hastily outfitted with iron doors, window bars and barbed wire. Rumours spread that, outside the city, construction was proceeding rapidly on new so-called "study centres", each meant to house tens of thousands. Fear reigned. People said the day of judgment had come.