The below article was published by The Edmonton Journal, photo credit: The Edmonton Journal
‘Chinese intelligence puts pressure on everybody to destroy Uyghur diaspora, East Turkic diaspora’
For more than two decades, Abdulahat Nur has driven a school bus in Edmonton. Currently, he shepherds kids to the Edmonton Islamic Academy, located in the city’s northwest. He came to Canada from China, via Kyrgyzstan, 25 years ago. He and his wife have four daughters.
It seems a rather simple life.
But Nur’s world has been anything but simple. He isn’t just a bus driver and dad — he’s also the prime minister in exile of East Turkistan.
He’s an outspoken critic of the Chinese regime, and he’s calling for leaders around the world to call out Beijing for its treatment of the Uyghur people. His government in exile has called on more and more nations to join the likes of Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom to censure China for genocide in what’s now known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
In 2021, after the Americans officially recognized China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide, then-secretary of state Michael R. Pompeo said, “Their morally repugnant, wholesale policies, practices, and abuses are designed systematically to discriminate against and surveil ethnic Uyghurs as a unique demographic and ethnic group, restrict their freedom to travel, emigrate and attend schools, and deny other basic human rights of assembly, speech and worship. (People’s Republic of China) authorities have conducted forced sterilizations and abortions on Uyghur women, coerced them to marry non-Uyghurs, and separated Uyghur children from their families.”
China swallowed up what was the independent nation of East Turkistan in 1949.
Nur was a teacher. But, as part of his history lessons, he’d educate students about the region — that it wasn’t always historically a part of China. He spoke about the unique language and culture of the people. But even from a classroom in a far-flung northwest province, the Chinese government heard all. Nur said he was “blacklisted” and then jailed several times.
The prison experiences are burned in his memory. There were 10-15 people crammed in a small cell, “like an old dungeon.”
“It was a small room and then they give us only water and bread twice a day,” Nur said. “Breathing (was) very difficult because the environment of the room was very bad. That’s because there were so many people, there was no washroom, you cannot wash your hands, and then you used one small item as a toilet in front of everybody.”
He said they were given Chinese propaganda on a regular basis, and encouraged to think the “right” way.
“We were told that you are living because of the Chinese Communist Party,” Nur said. “They were always trying to brainwash and convince you about the Communist Party, and trying to get you to quit your religion, to quit your background, your language…”
Canada recognizes China’s actions as genocide
In 2020, months before Canada’s Parliament officially recognized China’s actions in the Uyghur region as a genocide, a parliamentary subcommittee came forward with disturbing findings.
“(China) continues to detain Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in what witnesses referred to as concentration camps, where women and girls are regularly subjected to sexual abuse and other forms of gender‑based violence; separates children from their families and places them in state run schools or orphanages; forces Uyghurs to work in various types of factories in Xinjiang and other regions of China, as part of the PRC government’s ‘poverty reduction’ initiative; uses invasive surveillance measures to repress Uyghurs living in Xinjiang and abroad; and imposes barbaric methods to reduce Uyghur birth rates in Xinjiang, including the forced use of intrauterine contraceptive devices as well as forced and coerced sterilizations and abortions.”
But that subcommittee found that Canada simply doesn’t have the international pull to force China to change.
In 1997, Nur fled China to Kyrgyzstan. But he wasn’t free of the Chinese government. At that time, he didn’t see himself as a dissident or a revolutionary — he was just a man fearful for his life.
“The Chinese intelligence service followed me and threatened me to go back to my country,” said Nur. “I refused, and then the Chinese government sent some people, and then they put our pictures on the walls to capture us. So then I had to leave Kyrgyzstan.”
He fled to Turkiye in 1999, and says the Chinese government responded by placing his wife, parents, brother and even his children in what Nur called a concentration camp.
“The Chinese intelligence service called me that I must come back to my country. I said no, and then they said, if you don’t come back, your family will be in jail forever.”
Desperate, he appealed to the United Nations through the organization’s offices in Ankara, the Turkish capital. He was officially recognized as a political refugee, but was told little could be done for his family. They were Chinese citizens within Chinese borders.
Nur came to Canada in 2001. He and his wife had three children at the time — she met with Canadian officials at the embassy in Beijing, and started the process to reunite the family in Edmonton.
Sadly, none those children would make it to Canada.
After the meeting at the Canadian embassy, an obvious, expected problem arose. Like many Uyghurs, the Nur family could not access Chinese passports. In 2005, his wife was able to go to Beijing and, using fake identification, was finally able to get out. She came to Canada, but their three children remained in Uyghur territory with their maternal grandparents.
Then came the threats. Chinese intelligence agents ordered the couple return to the country, claiming no one was caring for their children.
“And then they told us if we didn’t come back or if we didn’t work with them, our children will be in danger. We said no, because we thought that that Chinese government didn’t care about children,” said Nur.
But, in 2006, his three kids had to be fished out of deep wells located near their grandparents’ home. The Nurs’ 11-year-old daughter survived. Their 10-year old daughter and eight-year-old son did not. The couple learned that a woman claiming to be an exchange student had come by the grandparents’ home, saying she could escort the children to Edmonton since she would be attending university there. Nur believes this woman was a plant — a spy or assassin — who lured his children to their deaths. Their oldest child has never been allowed to leave China.
While the cause of his children’s deaths will likely never be solved, the U.S. State Department is clear about how it sees the repression of Turkic and Uyghur people, with officials portraying Uyghurs as a societal threat that must be eradicated.
“Party apparatchiks have denied international observers unhindered access to Xinjiang and denounced reliable reports about the worsening situation on the ground, instead spinning fanciful tales of happy Uyghurs. Meanwhile, they are delivering far darker messages to their own people, portraying Uyghurs as ‘malignant tumours,’ comparing their faith to a ‘communicable plague.’”
The economic reasons that China wants this territory to remain Chinese are obvious. The Uyghur region produces about one-tenth of the world’s aluminum. It’s also a manufacturing hub.
Bureaucrat Margaret McCuaig-Johnston told a Canadian parliamentary committee in 2024 that “dozens of parts in each Chinese EV are made with aluminum from Uyghur forced labour.”
Nur’s life in Canada
It’s estimated that there are about 3,000 Uyghurs living in Canada. After settling in Edmonton, Nur became executive director of the Alberta Uyghur Cultural Society before taking his activism to the international stage.
The East Turkistan government-in-exile holds meetings around the world every few years and Nur quickly rose through its ranks. At a 2023 gathering of the Uyghur diaspora in Washington, D.C, he was elected prime minister.
The East Turkistan “government” has been increasingly active, seizing on U.S. President Donald Trump’s criticism of the Chinese regime while warning that its former territory is home not only to critical minerals and new Chinese data centres, but also much of China’s nuclear arsenal.
“A restored free and independent East Turkistan would supply America these minerals at competitive rates, strengthening American industry and breaking Beijing’s chokehold,” said Salih Hudayar, foreign minister of the ETGE (East Turkistan Government in Exile).
The first step is to have the United Nations recognize East Turkistan as a “non-self-governing territory.” Currently, 17 territories are recognized as such by the UN, including the Western Sahara and the Falkland Islands. If the UN was to grant this status to East Turkistan, it would need to acknowledge that the land is not a willing part of China, but an occupied territory.
“Our ultimate goal is independence of East Turkistan, because without independence we cannot guarantee our living, we cannot guarantee our basic human rights,” said Nur.
As a vocal dissident living in Edmonton, who travels to different spots of the world to meet with other Uyghur refugees, does Nur feel safe?
“I feel danger,” said Nur. “I think Chinese spies are everywhere. Chinese intelligence puts pressure on everybody to destroy Uyghur diaspora, East Turkic diaspora. I am feeling that international pressure of China. But I think Canada’s intelligence service is stronger than Chinese intelligence in Canada. So, if China did something against me, it would be big problem to China.”