The long silence is not a breakdown in personal relations. It is the result of state control over Uyghur families. Uyghurs are a Turkic, and predominantly Muslim, people numbering approximately 12 million people in China and half a million in the diaspora. The Chinese administration refers to the Uyghur homeland as “Xinjiang”, or “new frontier”, which is considered a colonial term by many Uyghurs. The toponyms “East Turkistan” and “Uyghur Region” are preferred by Uyghurs in the diaspora. Beginning in 2016-17, as the Chinese state expanded surveillance and mass internment in the Uyghur Region – as purported counter-terror measures – contact between Uyghurs abroad and their families inside China collapsed. In 2020, a leaked Chinese government database cited Uyghurs’ “overseas communications” with relatives as a cause for internment. In a connected world, where long-distance communication is cheap and instantaneous, making a phone call has far-reaching consequences.

Full commentary : How China’s transnational surveillance is isolating Uyghur families.