Prisoner at the Border

Bole is a county-level city perched on Xinjiang’s border, at the northernmost tip of China’s “rooster’s tail.” It’s a remote outpost: 3,282 kilometers from Beijing, 524 kilometers from the regional capital Urumqi, and sharing a 95-kilometer frontier with Kazakhstan. Nestled north of the Tianshan Mountains, this land and its people are nourished by Lake Sayram.

As November ushered in the depths of autumn, a lawyer embarked on a grueling journey. A 4-hour and 20-minute flight from Beijing to Urumqi, followed by a 4-hour and 5-minute high-speed train ride, finally brought him to Bole. He met Yashar at the city’s detention center. This was Yashar’s first contact with the outside world in over three months since he was taken from Chengdu on August 7. Yashar’s friend, relaying the lawyer’s account of the situation, painted a grim picture: Yashar was in poor condition. His sunken eyes were filled with fear.

In Chengdu’s bustling teahouses, underground bars, and indie bookstores, Yashar stood out from the crowd. He was in his early twenties, with long legs, deep eyes, angular features, and a handsome Central Asian appearance. Yashar had been producing music in his native Uyghur tongue since he was a teenager. His creative process mirrored that of other rappers: he found rhymes in his personal experiences, wove through poetic narratives, and then set them to melodies. The only difference? Yashar’s lyrics were in Uyghur.

This is Yashar’s second disappearance. The first was on November 27, 2022. That night, he rushed to Wangping Street along the Jinjiang River in Chengdu and pushed his way to the center of the crowd. Kneeling down and raising a candle in his hands, he sang a lament in Uyghur, mourning the ten Uyghur people who had tragically died in the Urumqi fire days earlier. Plainclothes police and confrontational thugs quickly surrounded him. Some loudly accused this foreign-looking man of being an outside agitator, sent to undermine China. A few thugs pushed him to the ground, hurling what was likely the only English they knew—profanities—as they beat him. That night, Yashar and several other young people at the center of the crowd were taken away and charged with disturbing public order. After 21 days in criminal detention, Yashar was released on bail.

As with other protesters who have been arrested, criminally charged, or administratively punished, Yashar discovered that he had entered into the Chinese state surveillance network. On August 9, 2023, the day after the World University Games closed in Chengdu, police from Bole City in Xinjiang arrived and took him from his rented apartment. Just two weeks earlier, he had celebrated his 25th birthday.

Yashar’s disappearance was silent, and left no trace. There were no documents and no formal procedures. Neither his girlfriend in Chengdu nor his family in Xinjiang knew who had taken him—or where. Eventually, rumors from Xinjiang suggested he had been brought back to his hometown. It wasn’t until November 13, over three months later, when the investigation into his case concluded and was forwarded to the Bole City Prosecutor’s Office for review, that his lawyer finally obtained accurate information about the case. The lawyer then rushed to the border to meet with him.

The police accused Yashar of two crimes:

1. Promoting extremism, and,
2. Illegally possessing materials which promote extremism.

Since 2015, China has implemented strict legislative controls over Xinjiang residents. The charges against Yashar stem from new offenses added to Article 120 of the Criminal Law, which came into effect on November 1, 2015, as part of the ninth amendment. These charges carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Shortly after this major legal revision, on December 27 of the same year, the National People’s Congress passed the “Counter-Terrorism Law of the People’s Republic of China,” which took effect on January 1, 2016. This legislation imposed an unprecedented criminalization of the religion, culture, and daily life of ethnic minorities in the border regions.

The basis for Yashar’s ‘extremism’ charges mainly arises from a few Uyghur song lyrics he released publicly, as well as items allegedly found during a surprise search of his residence. However, according to those familiar with the case, the police didn’t actually find anything incriminating in his rented apartment.

“He posted his original songs (Uigga) on NetEase Cloud Music, which are still available. The police cherry-picked certain phrases and claimed they were problematic.”

Even though the evidence was weak, one friend pessimistically concluded that Yashar would likely face imprisonment. “In that place, with these charges, it’s unlikely that the Procuratorate won’t press charges.” The prosecutor’s review can be completed in as little as a month, after which Yashar could be formally indicted and sent to court.

Pray for luck for the son of Sayram Lake

Yashar attended university in Urumqi. His father is a public school teacher in Bole City, and his sister started college this year. The family struggles financially. When Yashar was first detained in Chengdu last year, his father had to wait for his paycheck from the school to afford the train fare to see him, and bring him warm clothes. Despite being located north of the Tianshan Mountains, Bole”s urban layout is indistinguishable from any third-tier Chinese city. The city center has a grid of streets with names such as Unity Road, Nation-Building Road, Red Star Road, Yan’an Road, Democracy Road, and Culture Road. The river in the city is called July 1st [Qiyi] Reservoir. Only the roads further from the city center bear [Uyghur] names like Sayram Lake Road or Haxar Road.

After being released on bail from Chengdu’s detention center [in 2022], Yashar told me about his hometown. Born in 1998, he received his compulsory education when border town teachers still taught in Uyghur. In Bole City, less than a hundred kilometers from the border, he didn’t need to download a VPN. He was admitted to Xinjiang University of Finance and Economics to major in computer science, and left Bole to continue further studies in Urumqi, the capital of the autonomous region. There, he was required to speak only Mandarin Chinese. Yashar recalls one night where he secretly called his mother in Uyghur, and was discovered and disciplined. The university confiscated his passport and assured him that it would be returned to him upon graduation—but he never received it back. Some of his friends who similarly lost their passports obtained travel documents to emigrate to Europe or Turkey. Yashar had similar opportunities but chose not to take them.

Yashar recounted witnessing a friend’s departure abroad, which led to the friend’s relatives and even neighbors being implicated and detained in “re-education camps” for quite some time. He feared that if he left, it would endanger his family and neighbors. His sister was still in school, and his father couldn’t afford to lose his job.

Yashar has been composing rap songs in Uyghur since he was a teenager.

His stage name is ‘Uigga’, which he once explained in a song means “lucky star.” His lyrics often reflect hardships which life has dealt him. For instance, when a friend committed suicide, he expressed deep regret and remorse. In 2019, participating in a rap competition in Xinjiang, he performed his original song “Maybe You, Maybe Me.” The lyrics read: “Of course, the first question is how to survive underground; life rides on your tired body, has it bent your spine too? I’m sorry there are too few people who can relax around you.”

Already, in 2017, when Yashar uploaded this song to the Internet, sharing Uyghur songs online in China was extremely difficult. He had to translate the lyrics into Chinese to prove the content was “harmless.” With the song’s upload, Yashar appended the following note to the lyrics: “I appeal to the relevant reviewers for leniency. This song and its lyrics contain no pornography, violence, political subversion, drugs, or any vulgar or illegal content. It’s a genuine reflection of my inner thoughts, and it tells a true story. Life is often tough, right? As the song title suggests, maybe you or I will face all kinds of difficulties in life. It’s not easy for anyone. I’ve worked very hard to translate these lyrics. I hope you can help more people hear this song. P&L! Love you all!” (Note: P&L stands for Peace & Love).

July 25th is Yashar’s birthday. Since 2019, he has uploaded a song around his birthday each year, depicting his state of mind. By July 25, 2023, he had released a total of five birthday songs. The lyrics within these consistently reflect themes of hustling and exhaustion in the face of life’s pressures: “Even with a spine deformed from pressure, I never stop, spending every minute hustling for survival”; “Depression is like a parasite, pressure from all sides like iron chains around my throat; reality is like an ultra-sharp razor, stripping away every fiber of my self-esteem and dignity.”

On July 25, 2022, he uploaded two birthday songs, expressing a desire to put in his resignation and run away. He introduced himself to his audience, saying, “I’m an artist and a wanderer, son of Lake Sayram, the pride of Bole”; “Going out and walking up to my motorbike, I don’t know my destination, but I always get where I want to be.” Yashar had also ventured into entrepreneurship with his own clothing brand and cultural company. In late November of that year, he recorded a music video which promoted his brand’s T-shirts.

Take to the streets for Urumqi

The slight improvements in Yashar’s life were soon shattered by the government’s iron fist at the protest. Later, he often joked about that night of November 27, 2022, when he was mistaken for a foreigner. The men beating him cursed him in English, and he wanted to retort: “I bet my Mandarin is better than yours.” After being thrown into the detention center, when other inmates saw that he was new and tried to bully him, Yashar simply took off his shirt and showed them the tattoos on his back. When he had explained why he was arrested, the other detainees, mostly arrested for theft or fraud, treated him with much more respect.

At 7:49 PM on November 24, 2022, a fire broke out in the locked-down Jixiang Yuan community complex in Tianshan District, Urumqi, Xinjiang. It claimed 10 lives, and 9 other people were injured.² A Uyghur mother and her four children died in the fire, trapped in a high-rise apartment with no means of escape. At the time, the woman’s husband and father of the children was detained in a “re-education camp” in Xinjiang, so he was unable to help them flee.

On November 25, following the fire, masses of citizens gathered on Urumqi’s streets, demanding an end to the lockdown. Ironically, in front of the People’s Government building, the leader waved the five-starred flag of the People’s Republic of China. The crowd sang the national anthem—the first Chinese song many had learned after losing their native language. Its opening line is: “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!” That night, clashes erupted between police and civilians on Urumqi’s streets. Many local residents began livestreaming their experiences on short-video platforms. In the early hours of that night, anyone who set their location to ‘Urumqi’ was able to see the faces of countless people crying. By the second half of the night, all of those accounts had been shut down.

The deaths in Urumqi, caused by senseless lockdowns, were a man-made tragedy. On November 26 and 27, 2022, Shanghai residents chose to gather on Urumqi Middle Road in the city center to mourn the victims of the fire. Having endured a nightmarish spring, these people emerged from their homes, violating the lockdown restrictions, and carried their trauma with them. They held A4 pieces of paper high above their heads—a blank sheet of paper, with nothing written on it, speaks louder than a thousand words.

On November 27, citizens in Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, Beijing, and other cities broke lockdown and gathered together, holding blank sheets of paper. In Chengdu, people assembled on Wangping Street near the Jin River, an area known for its food streets and riverside parks; a popular spot for drinking tea and chatting. That night, people held up white papers and illuminated phone screens, chanting “Give me liberty or give me death” and demanding an end to the lockdowns. They stayed well into the night. The protest was peaceful, tinged with the warmth and joy of long-awaited reunions. Some led impromptu dances, while couples shared tender embraces by the river.

Out of all the cities, Chengdu’s police acted the fastest. On the evening of November 27, they were instructed to use force to control the scene. They ruthlessly apprehended conspicuous figures, including Yashar, and detained them that very night on charges of “gathering a crowd to disturb public order.”

Initially, these ordinary people vanished without a trace. Their relatives rushed to Chengdu and scoured its various detention centers, but could not find their names on any records. Later, they were told that as political prisoners, their names had been changed to code numbers. Lawyers volunteered to assist but were unable to meet with the detainees until mid-December. However, by late December, news of the young people’s arrests near the Jin River was made public. Following external pressure and support, all of those known to the outside world were released. Most of the young people arrested in Chengdu, including Yashar, were put through criminal proceedings and released on bail after 21 days in custody.

Yashar recalled that during interrogation, he was singled out due to his Uyghur identity. He was repeatedly questioned about his motives for participating in the gathering. He insisted that he was simply sympathizing with his Xinjiang compatriots and wanted to mourn.

Yashar was just a drop in the wave of protests. After being arbitrarily deprived of freedom for three years, Han Chinese and Uyghurs became mirrors to each other, recognizing in their shared, inescapable misfortune the deep interconnection between their fates.

In Shanghai, police sealed off the surrounding neighborhoods and confronted the people gathered with shields. They formed cordons to encircle those unwilling to leave the central areas—allowing exits but no entries—to disperse the crowd. But people refused to leave; even when driven several blocks away, they sat around subway stations, still shouting and uploading live videos to social media. Several buses arrived, filled with armed police. They began beating and arresting reporters, and protesters were hauled onto the buses in batches. By the evening of the 27th, the street sign for “Urumqi Middle Road” had been removed.

In fact, protests in Guangzhou’s Haizhu District had been unfolding for weeks before November 27. Workers, having lost income due to prolonged lockdowns, had begun breaking through barricaded checkpoints since early November. On the evening of November 14, workers collectively breached the cordons of urban villages, gathering in the streets to protest control measures. Together, they overturned police cars and even mobbed the hazmat-suited workers known as “dabai”—“Big Whites.” By November 17, a photo of a woman being forced by police to kneel with her hands bound behind her back after she had broken through a checkpoint went viral on social media, sparking a wave of resistance. Haizhu District became a symbol of defiance, and on November 27, people holding blank sheets of paper converged on Haizhu Square.

In Beijing’s Chaoyang District, people began gathering along the Liangma River in the afternoon. Days earlier, Beijing authorities had announced a citywide “silent period,” evoking nightmarish memories of Shanghai’s lockdown and leaving residents feeling stifled to breaking point. On that not-yet-so-cold evening, people who had been confined at home for days rushed out to walk and breathe fresh air, raising white sheets of paper and shouting. Many wore smiles of excitement and satisfaction on their faces. These were all people who had been tormented during the three years of lockdowns, including but not limited to: film directors, publishers, media professionals, university teachers, ordinary white-collar workers, students, ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities. A group of girls arranged candles at a scenic spot by the river, presenting bouquets with mourning poems inscribed on them. Some sang, others recited sonnets, and some gave interviews to foreign media.

A woman of retirement age stood in the center of the crowd, and delivered a speech which included excerpts from the American Declaration of Independence. She was a survivor of the “June Fourth” crackdown in Tiananmen Square, and along with her husband, had served over a decade in prison. Every move they made was under intense police surveillance. That night, she told me that she and her husband lived near the Liangma River, and they had come downstairs after hearing the commotion only to find a crowd of young protesters. The couple was deeply moved, feeling as if they had been transported back to Tiananmen Square 33 years earlier. She said seeing young people dare to resist filled her with hope for China’s future.

Screenshot from an advertisement video Yashar shot for his brand’s cultural T-shirts.

“A pack of hunters”

In Shanghai, protesters were hauled away in buses on the night of November 27. They were taken to police stations for screening, and most of them were released. Some had their chat records confiscated and were criminally detained. In the weeks following the “White Paper Protests,” police in Shanghai often violated legal procedures, and forcibly checked the phones of passers-by on the streets. In Beijing, the police were more conflicted. The next day, they still seemed undecided on who to arrest. They used signal trucks to capture real-name mobile phone numbers and called each person individually. For those who were in the center of the crowds, or those whose videos were uploaded to foreign websites, they located them directly, and questioned them at home. Some were taken for blood tests—the step before being imprisoned in detention centers—but the police were suddenly notified to release them.

By early December, COVID restrictions were abruptly lifted, leading to a surge in infections. Around December 18, Beijing police began a formal crackdown, conducting door-to-door arrests with blank detention notices in hand. This sweep continued until Christmas Eve, with word spreading of over twenty people who had vanished. The authorities mainly targeted those who appeared to have prominent roles during the protests, but also picked up some who had kept a low profile yet remained on the police radar. These individuals were low-hanging fruit, readily scooped up to meet quotas for “nationwide law enforcement” or stability maintenance KPIs.

Following public outcry, most of those arrested were not prosecuted, and were released in late spring or the early summer of 2023. Some faced administrative penalties, while others were released on bail. All of them, however, were now “on the list”—marked as persons of interest for ongoing surveillance.

Their newfound freedom was precarious at best. Those under close watch could be hauled back in at any moment. “It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why Yashar was arrested,” one of his supporters said.

What can be ascertained is that after Yashar’s first arrest and release, his fledgling career as a singer composing in his native language was rudely interrupted by state surveillance. In the spring of 2023, he released a song called “Wake Up.” In the hunting scene he depicts, he’s not the hunter, but the prey. “Unable to understand the fate etched on my forehead, loneliness took over—uneasiness, anxiety, worry, and fear.”

On July 23, 2023, as his birthday approached again, he released a birthday song. Though brief, its lyrics were poignant: “How I long for a normal life, but the script I’ve been handed is a tragedy. I’ve become the story, just facing my reality.”

Five days after this song’s release, the World University Games opened in Chengdu. During this period, Yashar faced even tighter surveillance. According to his friends, the police had thugs tail him. Unwilling to quietly accept this blatant stalking, he confronted them and posted videos of the encounters on social media. Perhaps this behavior was deemed “too radical,” because on August 9, the day after the Games ended, he was taken away.

Yashar has always lived among Han Chinese communities and has many Han friends in Chengdu, including his girlfriend. The police view him as an “extremist,” perhaps simply because he’s an Uyghur who resists assimilation, and is unwilling to give up his mother tongue. Thus, for them, he is a perpetual source of instability.

Someone left a comment under one of his songs: “Uigga (Yashar) has a unique quality about him. If we were to compare him to a drink, he’d be like lemon-flavored soda. It’s slightly sour at first sip, not immediately pleasant but captivating. As you swallow, the fizz brings a refreshing sensation, hiding a subtle, sweet coolness. Just like his temperament, it may seem acerbic on the surface—but when you peel back the layers, it’s all tenderness and compassion for this world. If you’re willing to savor the whole taste, you might find yourself shedding a tear without even realizing it.”

1

This is the Uyghur language pronunciation of Yashar’s name in English. His official Uyghur ID card uses Chinese characters: Ya Xia Er · Xiao He Lati（亚夏尔·肖合拉提.）.

2

The general belief is that the casualties from the fire were much more severe than the official reports indicate. This is due to China’s “zero-COVID” policy, which led to street lockdowns, preventing fire trucks from reaching the scene in time. Most residents were not allowed to leave their homes, and some residents of buildings where COVID incidents had occurred were also locked inside their apartments, unable to escape.