echilip sayrash (echilmaq
“to open” and
sayrash
“to sing, to talk”). Some people also mentioned such terms as
100 gul
(barche guller) echilsun
(let 100 (all the) flowers bloom) and
istil
tuzitish
(rectification).
As people recalled,
echilip sayrash
(open and talk) was a movement in
which people were forced to tell everything they had in their mind. People
were told that the Communist Party would support them, would help them
to realize their dreams. And people talked about their concerns regarding
Uyghurs. “We all talked about what we had in our hearts. We asked for
Uyghur autonomy, a Uyghur Republic (like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).
As a result, they started to target us. We became traitors. They blamed us in
front of thousand people at the university courtyard,” – said an 85-year old
man from Tashkent (Biz konglumizde bar gepni eyttuq, echilip sayriduq,
biz Qazaqstan, Ozbekistandek Uyghur Respublikisi bolsun deduq. Ular
ichimizdikini biliwelip, bizni kureshke aldi). He also recalled a story about
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a girl who committed suicide because she could not tolerate her brother
being bullied, so they brought her body into a meeting and began to scoff
at her. They blamed her for being weak and declared her death was
haram
(forbidden).
“They made us talk in front of everybody. We talked about our mistakes
as well, and later we were punished for this. It was terrible,” – recalled an
82-year old woman from Tashkent.
There is also a story of an old lady from Bishkek whose husband, a
doctor, wanted to migrate to the Soviet Union. Chinese authorities would
not permit it, saying he had received training in Beijing and was needed
there. Officials wrote up a document falsely listing his “secret crimes” and
tried to make her read it aloud in public. She refused to do so and then she
was humiliated in front of everyone by being called the wife of a traitor.
“Everybody started to yell at me calling me
khayin
[traitor] as well.”
Istil tuzitish
(style correction) was another political campaign, which
started in 1957 and aimed at group-moderated social control and eliminating
ideological differences among the people. There is an interesting account
from a woman who was studying at school in Urumchi at that time: “During
the
Istil tuzitish
movement, many teachers were arrested, some were exiled
to villages to work with peasants. Our school was empty and later closed,
because there were no teachers left. Our family then moved to Ghulja.”
Here are some stories told by the interviewees by those who migrated
in the 1960s:
(A) “My father had a Soviet passport and because of it he was arrested
in 1962 for three months. He was called a traitor. He worked as a chief
accountant. They (Chinese authorities –
G.N
.) demanded that people who
had Soviet passports should either move to the Soviet Union or give up the
Soviet passports. After he was released, our family immediately decided to
move to the Soviet Union. However, by that time adding any extra families
to your passport was not allowed. After we left, the border was closed, but
many Uyghurs tried to cross the border through Chochek and Qorghas
without passports.”
(B) “We moved in 1963. My father was the second or third secretary
of the Ili district. When my father felt that our family was in danger, he
immediately decided to take us and leave for the Soviet Union. At the time
we had connections with our relatives across the border. However, even
though our relatives said that the life in the Soviet Union is difficult, it
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was still better to leave, because the situation in Xinjiang was growing
increasingly bad.”
The man, who moved in 1963, also mentioned propaganda tools such
as movies and books. He remembered such Soviet movies as
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