Thousands of people are currently taking to the streets in China to demonstrate against the government’s strict zero-Covid policy. The current protests were sparked by an apartment fire in the four-million-dollar metropolis of Ürümqi in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. According to the Chinese authorities, 10 people died last Thursday and at least 44 people according to Uyghur statements.
Many criticized that the strict corona measures – such as barriers – had hindered the extinguishing and rescue work. Residents had made it more difficult to escape outside due to locked doors.
Uighurs in Zurich lost relatives
Abdulhafiz Maimaitimin (27) has been living as a refugee in the canton of Zurich for 14 months. He’s devastated. Because in the fiery hell his aunt and four of her children found their deaths. These are Haiernishahan Abdureheman († 48) and Shehide († 13), Imran († 11), Abdurrahman († 9) and Nehdiye († 5).
Maimaitimin receives Blick at his accommodation on Tuesday afternoon. Dejectedly, he says: “I last saw my aunt and my cousins in 2016, when I visited them for three days. They showed me around town and the kids played with me.”
In 2017, the Chinese put his aunt’s husband and one of their sons in a detention center. Soon after, Maimaitimin again called his father’s youngest sister. Since then he has had no contact with his aunt.
Residents were locked up
He learned about the fire and the death of his relatives from a friend. According to this, the tragedy must have played out as follows:
Last Thursday, for unknown reasons, a fire broke out on the 15th floor of the 21-story skyscraper, which spread very quickly to the floors above.
Maimaitimin’s relatives lived on the 19th floor. Like many others, they had no chance of escaping the fiery hell. Due to the Chinese government’s zero-Covid policy, authorities cordoned off the settlement about 100 days ago. Bars were even placed in the corridors of the stairwells and the entrances so that no one could leave the apartment.
Residents of the home desperately cried for help on social media. A message with Maimaitimin’s look read, “Open the doors, we can’t breathe anymore!”
Did the rescuers deliberately hesitate?
Maimaitimin doubts that the fire brigade could not reach the houses because of the barriers. “That is a lie!” he says. He sees the reason for the late intervention of the emergency services elsewhere: “Only a few hundred meters away from this settlement are the police, fire brigade, army and a hospital. I am convinced that they deliberately delayed the rescue operation because the whole building is exclusively Uyghur.”
The aunt and one of the children have since been found among the rubble. The other three are still missing. Another son was outside in a hall where hundreds of people were quarantined at the time of the fire.
Six years on the run
Maimaitimin left his country with his sister in 2016 at the insistence of his father. This was after the Chinese started building internment camps. The siblings first traveled to Dubai, then to Egypt and finally to Istanbul, where they lived for a long time and where the sister still resides.
Maimaitimin flew to Switzerland 14 months ago. With the usual transit trick, he admits. He bought a ticket to Ukraine in Turkey – with a transfer in Zurich. After arriving in Switzerland, he applied for asylum and is now waiting for a response.
Maimaitimin has not heard from his parents since 2017. “I only know that my father was sentenced to nine years in prison, I don’t know why.”
Dangerous phone calls
Maimaitimin is in close contact with Andili Memetkerim (55), who works as a doctor in Othmarsingen AG and coordinates the Swiss Uyghur Association – about 160 Uighurs live in Switzerland. He too has had no contact with his family for five years.
Memetkerim: “If you call relatives, it gives the Chinese a reason to lock them up in the camp. Moreover, most telephone numbers are now invalid.” Every Uyghur household is now affected by the Chinese restrictions.
Then the two run out of words. They look at each other – and Memetkerim just says: “The situation for the Uighurs in China is bad, bad, bad.”